Serbian Orthodox Church

Serbians have celebrated the New Year according to the Julian calendar used by the Serbian Orthodox Church, known also as the Serbian, or Orthodox New Year.

A large number of Belgraders turned out for a fireworks display at midnight in front of the Temple of St. Sava, where religious services were previously held.

Several thousand people, led by pro-Russian opposition parties in Montenegro, gathered in the capital Podgorica on Wednesday to celebrate the Serbian Orthodox New Year while protesting against the country's membership of NATO.

The Serb opposition group in Montenegro, the Democratic Front, announced a new anti-NATO protest for Wednesday against the country's impending membership of the Western military allaince.

Ivica Dacic says the desecration of a Serbian Orthodox church in Pristina over the weekend provided yet more proof that "Kosovo is not fit for UNESCO."

Kosovo's Deputy Prime Minister Branimir Stojanovic condemned on Sunday in the strongest terms the desecration of the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Pristina.

The Serbian Orthodox church was desecrated by a group of protesters during Saturday's opposition riots in that city.

Marko Djuric called on Thursday - as Orthodox Serbs celebrated Christmas - on citizens to visit the holy places of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo.

The director of the Serbian Government's Office for Kosovo and Metohija said those religious sites "made the Serb people strong enough to survive hard times."

Christmas is a time for coming together - but not in Montenegro, where the followers of the two rival Orthodox churches - as usual - gathered to light their Christmas Eve Yule Logs in different places.

Displaced Serbs from Djakovica, a town in Kosovo, have visited a Serbian Orthodox church there on Orthodox Christmas Eve.

They came in a bus escorted by the police and brought a badnjak - an oak log that is part of Serbian Christmas traditions - to the church's yard, despite the fact several dozen ethnic Albanians gathered to protest against their arrival.

Wh are new borders being drawn within Serbia if Europe is uniting by erasing borders between states, Serbian Orthodox Church Patriarch Irinej has asked.

With the traditional greeting: “Peace of God - Christ is born," Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) Patriarch Irinej has congratulated the upcoming Christmas holiday.

Serbia's majority Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on January 7.