Prologue

LET US BE LIKE CHILDREN, PURE AND JOYFUL
Holiday

A look at the calendar, late December, creates an illusion that something ends and something begins. There is a natural need to draw the line, close the circle, as a solar year, and to leave the spent stories behind. The wolf changes its hair, and snake its skin, and the leaves fall only to sprout anew in the. So the world regenerates and perseveres.
But it has been a long time that the essential spirit of the holiday is missing, that festive feeling imbued with pure joy. That. A holiday is not fuss and hysteria of consumption, optimistic statements of politicians who have betrayed themselves and us, rigged statistics that have nothing to do with our daily lives. A holiday is here in as much as through it we become better, closer to one another, nobler. In as much as warms us up inside, silently. And that, truth to be told, we can still find only among children, to the extent in which we have note spoiled and poisoned them.
By piecing together the mosaic of the last edition in 2016, we visited the Island of Krčedin, the horse island on the Danube. Near Gornji Milanovac we visited the festival of hot rakia and returned with cool heads. In Obedska bara we revived the memory of Kupinik, the last capital of Serbian despots. We grew radiant by restoring life and hope in the tragic Prebilovci, Serbian village in Herzegovina. We flipped through the book of Mira Kusmuk, reminded ourselves of the great archaeologist Bora Jovanović, witnessed the pulsating live culture in Mladenovac and Novo Miloševo, talked to Mrgud Radovanović and Saša Đorđević. (...)
It is in front of you, so take your time. And now, let us celebrate. For real.