TANASIĆ: LET US SEND CHRISTMAS GREETINGS IN CYRILLIC, THE MOST JOYOUS CHRISTIAN HOLIDAY!

BELGRADE, JANUARY 6 /SRNA/ - Renowned Serbian linguist Sreto Tanasić told SRNA that greetings for the most joyous Christian holiday, Christmas, should be sent in the Cyrillic script, thereby further strengthening one's religious and national identity.

Tanasić noted that since ancient times it has been a rooted tradition to begin new undertakings on Christmas, and that one of them should be replacing Latin keyboards on mobile phones with Cyrillic ones. "It would be a symbolic act, and on such an important occasion it would, in a way, oblige many people or bring them back to using it throughout the year. If we do this now, we will see that it is not really an effort to use Cyrillic at all times," Tanasić said. He emphasized that switching to Cyrillic does not require time and that everyone benefits from it. "The holiday of the Birth of the Christ Child, or the little God - hence the diminutive Božić - returns us to the origins of our Orthodox faith, which, together with the Serbian language and the Cyrillic script, forms the foundation of Serbian cultural and spiritual identity," Tanasić stated. He pointed out that since the fall of the medieval Serbian state under Ottoman rule, Serbs for centuries did not have a state that gathered, united, protected and guided them, but they did have the Serbian language, script and Serbian Orthodox faith, which preserved them as a people. "The day of the Birth of Jesus Christ is the beginning of beginnings of our faith, and therefore it is especially significant for us, and the joy of that day should be shared with one another in a manner befitting the occasion," Tanasić concluded.