On the occasion of the holiday, the National Library of Serbia presented an entry from the „Diary of Ljubica S. Janković“ in which the author, as a young girl, writes about Christmas Eve and the preparations for celebrating Christmas.
„Christmas Eve. Although it is only past 10 o’clock, all of mine have gone to bed tired from much wandering and the tasks to which they have been exposed these days – as always before Christmas.
Father complains that his feet are frozen from when he went to buy the piglet and afterwards, insisted on staying and watching while it – poor thing! – was slaughtered and prepared outside. Mama says again, that even if this apartment does not cause half the work of the previous one – she is still barely standing on her feet and therefore she is waiting for no one but is going to bed. And Dana did not know what smarter thing she could do, and so she went to bed.
Only I, since I finished all my work, i.e., arranged the hallway and moved all the food into it and lined it up on bricks, so that it would freeze and be sweeter, and also, which is the main thing, so that it was moved from the ‘pantry’ out of reach of rats, mice, and cockroaches – since I have done all that, then – I want, just for the sake of custom, to enrich this poor notebook with a few more scribbles.
In any case, I don’t have much to say, because – God, forgive me – it did not seem to me that tomorrow is Christmas, that, for me, most solemn and brightest holiday; firstly, because we weren’t ‘falling on our noses’ from work, as before, but we distributed everything nicely, and so we finished everything gradually, which in other years, even many days before the holiday, we prepared everything in a rush; and secondly, because there is no snow – the most beautiful Christmas decoration.
True, at dinner we performed all the religious rites in the most solemn way, i.e., read the prayer, sang ‘Thy Nativity’, bit into a fig, yellow sugar, ammonium chloride and I don’t know what else – as Uncle Tika said, but still, when I look outside and see the trees bare, the earth bare, and everything bare, nothing is dressed in the festive attire in which the birth of the greatest infant has been welcomed until now – then it simply seems to me that nature has forgotten what tomorrow is, and that it no longer knows anything of the merits of that God-man whose birth is celebrated tomorrow.
But no, I have no right, for when I directed my gaze to the sky, I saw that the moon and the brilliant stars had flecked the entire heavenly vault and that they – like the most precious diamonds – strived to see which would more greatly exalt the glory of God with the beauty of its radiant rays and welcome the arrival of the sublime child as solemnly as possible.
There are still those, then, who know how to appreciate what is sublime and noble, what regenerates our soul. No, materialism and the practical prose of life have not yet taken over and completely triumphed; the ideal, beautiful, and sublime must survive as long as there are people and souls within them – the divine spark.“
The Diary of Ljubica S. Janković is located in the Legacy of Ljubica and Danica Janković, which was bequeathed to the National Library of Serbia. By the express wish of the legator Ljubica S. Janković, the Diary was not available for use for 40 years after her death.
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Source: National Geographic; Photo: Printscreen YouTube