Saint Demetrius Day (Mitrovdan)
8 November 2026 — The flock is home and the loaf is on the table – happy slava!
Saint Demetrius Day, or Mitrovdan, falls on 8 November and honours Saint Demetrius of Thessaloniki, a Christian martyr revered as the patron of that city. The Serbian Orthodox Church follows the Julian calendar, in which the feast falls on 26 October – that corresponds to 8 November in the civil (Gregorian) calendar. Churches on the new calendar, such as the Bulgarian Church, mark it on 26 October. In Serbia the day is a slava, a family feast honouring a household's patron saint, and Mitrovdan is the slava of many families. The table features the slava loaf, boiled wheat and wine, and the loaf is blessed and broken within the family. In the folk calendar the day marks the boundary between summer and winter: the fieldwork is done, flocks are brought in, and shepherds' and farmhands' terms were traditionally settled. It belongs to the deepening autumn, as the days grow shorter. That is why a shepherd with his flock crosses the sky, and beside him glides the loaf, a symbol of the shared table.
Flying across the sky: An ethereal, bluish-silver star figure of a shepherd with a staff, drawn from pale dots and thin lines like a constellation, walking across the sky
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