Saint Nicholas Day Barbara (4 December), St. Savvas (5 December), and the following feast of St. Anne (9 December); all these are often collectively called the ""Nikolobárbara"", and are considered a succession of days that heralds the onset of truly wintry cold weather in the country. Therefore, by tradition, homes should have already been laid with carpets, removed for the warm season, by St. Andrew's Day (30 November), a week ahead of the "Nikolobárbara". In Serbia, and among the Serb people living across the world, Saint Nicholas is the most widely celebrated family patron saint, celebrated as the feast day ("Slava") of "Nikoljdan".
Church of St Nicholas, Melnik the 2000s. The Church of St Nicholas lies on top of the eponymous hill of Sveti Nikola ("Saint Nicholas") just south of the town of Melnik. The church occupies a location which hosted other sacred buildings in Antiquity. A Thracian sanctuary devoted to the goddess Bendis, the Thracian variant of Artemis, stood at the place before a Christian basilica was built in the 5th century. However, the older church did not survive for long, as it was ruined by the end of the 6th century. The Church of St Nicholas is generally dated to the late 12th century, a time