Portal:Religion

• ... that religious studies scholar C. Jouco Bleeker believed that religions are like acorns?
• ... that across his thirty-six collections, fashion designer Alexander McQueen contemplated religion, told fairy tales, and criticized the fashion industry?
• ... that the author of the comic book Timeless Voyage was the leader of a UFO religion?
• ... that a religious community is a group of people who practice the same religion, but do not have to live together?
• ... that Freedom of Religion South Africa filed an unsuccessful lawsuit to keep child spanking legal?
• ... that the nonconformist minister Ichabod Chauncey was banished from England under the Religion Act 1592 and spent two years in exile in Holland where he published a defence of his actions?

The badnjak (Serbian Cyrillic: бадњак, pronounced [bǎdɲaːk]), also called veseljak (весељак, pronounced [ʋɛˈsɛ̌ʎaːk], literally "the one who brings joy" in Serbian), is a tree branch or entire tree that is central to Serbian Christmas celebrations. It is placed on a fire on Christmas Eve and its branches are later brought home by worshipers. The tree from which the badnjak is cut, preferably a young, straight and undamaged oak, is ceremonially felled early on the morning of Christmas Eve. The felling, preparation, bringing in, and laying on the fire, are surrounded by elaborate rituals, with many regional variations. The burning of the log is accompanied by prayers that the coming year brings food, happiness, love, luck, and riches. The log burns on throughout Christmas Day, when the first visitor strikes it with a poker or a branch to make sparks fly, while wishing that the family's happiness and prosperity be as abundant as the sparks. As most Serbs today live in towns and cities, the badnjak is often symbolically represented by a cluster of oak twigs with brown leaves attached, with which the home is decorated on Christmas Eve. (Full article...)