Vertep

What it is

Vertep is a Christmas custom of Serbian Orthodox life. It belongs to the eve of the Nativity on the Orthodox calendar, which the sources place on 6 January. Those who take part are called vertepaši, and the material describes them as boys and young men. Serbia is the country the sources connect with it. Beyond these points the description is short: it names the day, the custom and the name for those who keep it, without setting out a full order of events.

The name's meaning

The word vertep reaches Serbian from Church Slavonic, written there as вєртє́пъ and said roughly as [ʋerˈtep]. Its plain sense is cave. For the people who keep this custom, that cave is a particular one: the place remembered as the birthplace of Jesus in the Christmas story. Serbian Cyrillic writes the custom as вертеп, and those who take part are vertepaši, one of them a vertepaš. The name therefore holds the Nativity inside it, which is why the custom sits at Christmas rather than at another point in the year.

When it falls

The custom belongs to 6 January, which the sources give as Christmas Eve on the Orthodox calendar. The eve is the day of waiting before the feast, not the feast itself, so the custom sits at the threshold of the celebration. Because the date follows the church calendar, it stays in the same place each year. Serbia is the country the sources name, and no single town, church or building is put forward as its home.

A related custom

The sources point readers to another practice that carries the same name: Vertep theatre, kept among East Slavic ethnic groups. The two share a word and its history, but the material treats them as separate customs rather than as one tradition under two names. Nothing here says that the Serbian Christmas custom and the East Slavic theatre grew from each other, and no shared origin is claimed. A reader who meets the word should check which of the two is meant.

How Vertep is kept

The participants are the vertepaši, and the sources describe them as boys and young men. It is kept on 6 January, the eve of Orthodox Christmas, in Serbian Orthodox settings. That is the whole outline the material gives: a named group of young participants, a fixed date on the church calendar, and a link to the Nativity through the word for the cave. The sources do not lay out a step-by-step order of events, so no sequence of actions is set down here.

When and where

It falls on 6 January, the day the sources call Christmas Eve on the Orthodox calendar. That date comes from the church calendar rather than from a moveable feast, so it stays in the same place each year. The custom belongs to the eve, before the Christmas celebration itself.

Serbia is the country the sources link with this custom, and it belongs to Serbian Orthodox church life there. It is tied to the Christmas season rather than to a particular town, church or building, and no city is named as its home. The material available names Serbia and no other country.

What Vertep means

The name carries the meaning. Vertep comes from a Church Slavonic word for a cave, and the cave in question is the one remembered as the place where Jesus was born. So the custom is anchored in the Nativity story rather than in the winter season alone. Those who keep it are called vertepaši, a name built from the same word, which ties the participants to the scene they mark.

Days Vertep is marked

Questions people ask about Vertep

See also

Saint George's DayA saint's feast on 23 April, kept by churches and patron nations from England to GeorgiaSaint Andrew's DayThe feast of Andrew the Apostle, kept on 30 November and Scotland's national dayVidovdanA Serbian church feast on 28 June, kept in memory of those who died at KosovoSlavaAn annual Serbian family feast honouring their patron saint with blessed bread and wine

Good reading and sources

• Vertep (Serbian) on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-10.