The Celebration of Children's Birthdays in Belgrade and Consumer Society

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the celebration of children's birthdays, the extremely widespread and significant form of social and/or cultural practice in Belgrade, the capital of the Republic of Serbia. This type of social practice, the base of which is the family, was imported from Central and Western Europe to Belgrade between the First World War and the Second World War. The celebration of children’s birthdays achieved its full affirmation in the second half of the 20th century, when it became one of the most important family holidays in both urban and rural areas. It manifested concurrence with the characteristics of the consumer society even in the time of the socialist period, and in particular it fully coincided with the predominant ideal of the consumer society when the post-socialist Serbian society took a neoliberal political course. Despite some changes that mainly relate to the place and way of celebration, the very essence of this social practice has not been drastically changed. In this paper, we are trying to consider the role of birthday celebrations in Belgrade in the context of current economic, social and cultural circumstances.