Slava, or how to determine your family's patron saint

My wife and three children were all born in Thessaloniki, which is also where I came to Orthodoxy, so it was natural for us to feel a particular connection to St Demetrios as a family.

Back in 2019 during the abomination of desolation we celebrated our own, contrived version of Slava, because I felt we must do something to help us to cope with the loss of Holy Liturgy and Holy Communion, as well as our traditional annual agape meal. We used St. Nicholas for our family patron because He is the Patron St. of our parish, and we also asked for the intercessions of each patron Saint of every member of our family, in the presence of each of their icons. I think that we celebrated this on the Eve of what would have been Holy Pascha, had that not been cancelled. I know that the Serbians would probably regard this as inauthentic/fake/useless, etc... But that's okay by me, because We're not Serbian either. Don't customs always begin out of someone's perceived need for them anyway?

What do you mean by "Slava" in the title of the post? Forgive the ignorance.

We (think) that our little family's patron is St. Herman of Alaska now, because of several reasons mostly surrounding my wife's conversion. My family back in Romania was especially attached to St. Paraskeva, though. Which is common, i think, in Romania; I don't know. Linkified to avoid confusion.

you can also do the Slava for your personal patron saint

Theotokos.

Justin-H.S. said:

I thought that’s what it was called to have a family Patron, but I guess it just means “feast.”

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I see. I looked it up too and seems to be a "very Serbian" tradition. Very beautiful, I love it! But completely unknown to me

And here I actually attend a Serbian church and never adopted a Slava saint.

My family is very devoted to St. John of Shanghai, St. Paul, our patrons Saints, etc. I could never narrow it down.