Slava - Slava Today

Slava Today

The increased effective geographic mobility brought about by the post World War 2 urbanization of a previously highly agrarian society, combined with the deterioration of religious traditions under Communist rule, has made some aspects of the custom more relaxed. In particular, in the second half of the 20th century it became common to see traditional patriarchal families separated by great distances, so by necessity the slava came to occasionally be celebrated at more than one place by members of the same family.

While the slava kept something of a grassroots popularity during the Communist period, the post-Communist revival of Christian traditions has brought it a great resurgence. It is recognized as a distinctly (if not quite exclusively) Serbian custom, and today it is quite common for nonobservant Christians or even atheists to celebrate it in one form or another as a hereditary family holiday and a mark of ethnocultural identification.

"Slava" is also helpful in demographic investigations as genealogical indicator of relationships between families and branches of the same family.