“ЛЕБАЦ ЈЕ БОЖЈЕ ЛИЦЕ” (ОБРЕДНИ ХЛЕБ И ЖИТО КОД ПОМОРИШКИХ СРБА)
RITUAL BREAD OF SERBIANS FROM THE MURES VALLEY

Summary/Abstract: Wheat and bread are elements that follow people along their entire life in the culture of Serbians from the Romanian Mures Valley and the presence of bread and wheat in the popular belief and in the most various rituals simply fascinates. Our entire life is practically being lived between two kinds of bread: a sweetpogača for a newborn child and another one, sweet too , for the soul of the dead during the death watch... And between these two there is also the so-called „postupovniţa „ ( which is usually teared up over the head of a child who starts walking for the first time), the knotshaped bread for home holiday, the big knot-shaped bread prepared for Christmas, the small breads given to the carol-singers, „the health”, „the sun „, „the moon „, „the oxen in the yoke „, „the yard „, the small round breads with a cross for the „ Saturday of the Dead „, the bride’s pogača, the godfather’s knot-shaped bread, the knot-shaped bread for the young married woman, the small knot-shaped breads for requiem, the sweet pogača for the death watch... Wheat – the small grain on whichthe face of man appears as sculpted is usually used as a bearer of the magic role, of sacrifice and apotropaic. In our ethnology bread represents one of the omnipresent symbols. Bread ( the knot-shaped bread, the pogača or pogacha,the grain) is the center of all important life events; bread interweaves with people’s lives here. There are only few stories as fantastic and comprehensive as the story of bread... as this is not just a story on our daily food, but the story of mankind during all this time...

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