MOJEVIĆ: "MATERICE" ORTHODOX WOMEN’S DAY

DOBOJ, DECEMBER 28 /SRNA/ – A mother is the being most similar to God with immeasurable love for her children, which is why the Serbian Orthodox Church dedicates the second Sunday before Christmas to her, Deacon Vlado Mojević told SRNA.

Mojević, who is also a religious education teacher, says that this day can rightly be described as the Orthodox women’s day. “On that Sunday, children, together with their fathers, symbolically tie the mothers, who then ‘redeem’ themselves with gifts,” Mojević said. He emphasized the importance of the bond between child, mother, and father, symbolically expressed through the holidays of Detinjci /Children’s Day/, Materice /Mothers’ Day/, and Oci /Fathers’ Day/, representing love, sacrifice, and everything that makes a devoted family, the foundation of society. According to him, these family holidays are important because they lead up to Christmas, when the Child God is born and the Virgin Mary becomes the Mother of God. “The Lord’s birth itself is a family holiday. Christmas is a feast of joy, peace, forgiveness, and meeting one another, not only within families,” Deacon Mojević noted. He stressed the importance of strong family bonds, harmony, peace, respect, and mutual support in all circumstances, noting that the greatest pressures are directed precisely at the family as the foundation of society. Orthodox believers today mark Materice, the greatest Christian holiday dedicated to mothers and women, which always falls on the second Sunday before Christmas. According to custom, children rise early and, using a rope, string, scarf, shawl, or belt prepared in advance, playfully tie their mothers’ legs, in the same way mothers had tied them on Detinjci. The mother pretends not to know why she has been tied. The children congratulate her on the holiday, and she then gives gifts, thus being “untied.” In the same way, all married women are tied and “untied” with cakes or other sweets.