Religious Practices in Communist Yugoslavia: The Celebration of Christmas in St George’s Church in Titovo Užice in 1956

Abstract

The Communist Party of Yugoslavia passed in 1947 a guideline prohibiting the celebration of religious holidays outside the church, while the government of the FPRY sent an order, through a confidential circular in 1948, for the Catholic and Orthodox Christmas not to be officially recognized any longer. Church celebration of Christmas in the period after the adoption of these prohibitions is observed on the occasion of marking the "most joyous day of the priesthood and people" in St. George’s Church in Titovo Užice in 1956. Three narratives are compared with comparative analysis: a description of the church celebration of Christmas recorded in the Chronicle of the Užice churches and parishes of 1939, a description of the church celebration of Christmas recorded in the Chronicle of the Užice churches and parishes of 1956, and a description of the church celebration of Christmas in the Church of the Holy Virgin in Jablanica in 1958, recorded in a conversation conducted by the author of the text in 2018 with a respondent who served from 1958 as a priest in the church municipality of Dobroselica. Based on the observed similarities and differences in church celebration of Christmas in two temporal contexts (pre-socialist and socialist) and two spatial (urban and rural), conclusions are drawn about the implications of specific ambient socio-economic relations between the state and the church in socialist organization.