Pears in Slavic Folklore

The harvest of wild pears was done by women, who would carry them in their large skirts back to the house.

In folklore, pear trees were a duality: holy and demonic. Sacred and profane. Shelter and shadow. That's because it symbolized the place which belonged to the souls of the dead. It is the mediator tree. It is the river Styx on the way to the other side. It belongs to neither side, it belongs to both sides.

In one of our legends there is a story of a king who never went to church to pray to God but he did that under a pear tree (he used to say: “the pear tree is my church“) and his prayers were so successful that he was sanctified (Чајкановић 1994б: 173).

To eat the pear is to accept both sides and face the past and future. It is a peaceful reckoning with life and death.

Here's a paper on The Pear Tree in Serbian Traditional Culture and Oral Prose.