Time Proverbs and Social Change in Belgrade, Yugoslavia

In contemporary Belgrade the social idea of time has been changing in two ways. First, calendrical time no longer reflects Serbian Orthodox religious custom to a significant degree. The Church or Julian calendar has been gradually relegated over the past sixty years to a minor function of religious ritual; and Serbs, comprising over 80% of the population of the city (Bogavac 1974:665), generally calculate even the dates of many religious observances by the Gregorian calendar, civilly accepted in 1918 (Mišković 1966:106). Just as importantly, church holidays are no longer recognized by the postwar socialist government and are being gradually supplanted in their general observance by civil holidays (cf. Spangler 1979: Chapter Two).