…doesn’t happen.
What does happen are observances where the dead are remembered, and (for children and the elderly in rural villages) where scary masks and costumes are worn in a tradition originally meant to scare away winter.
I recently meant a charming, lovely young woman named Réka Bence, who has moved to the U.S. with her boyfriend, who is in grad school here. We talked about some of the Halloween events in town, and I asked her if Halloween was a holiday in Hungary. She told it really wasn’t, and described what she did remember of Halloween-like traditions in the land she grew up in. She decided to write it all and send it to me, and so I am sharing it here with you. so here’s Réka’s e-mail to me, slightly edited, and supplemented with photos I found on the web. Enjoy! And now, here’s Reka:
Original image from Picasa web album of Reka Bence
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The thing is, we don’t have Halloween in Hungary. Our October 31st is the Day of the Dead (Halottak napja), Nov. 2, which is our saddest holiday ever. Most schools give the whole week off, as the next day is All Saint’s Day (Mindenszentek), which is a national holiday. This is the same as the religious holiday that in several Christian societies is more likely to be called All Soul’s Day.
On Nov. 1st most families go to the cemeteries to put flowers on the graves of family members who have passed away, or even travel to faraway villages where their families came from to see the graves of great-grandfathers or mothers (or at least, that’s what my family does). [ This website agrees, saying Halottak napja is the day Hungarians "attend a requiem Mass and travel long distances to place flowers on the graves of loved ones and burn specially decorated candles to help the departed souls find their way to everlasting light."--Max]
Usually the only thing that other people who don’t do this notice out of this is a day off and that in Budapest for example, the trams and buses that go to big cemeteries are more frequent for a week.
What we have instead of Halloween is Farsang, which is like the Venice carnival. It is the tradition of scaring off the winter and having ballroom dances for girls who want to get married in the summer (they’re old village traditions, nobody does that anymore.) We also have Busójárás, which, as I just learned only happens in Mohács, which is a small traditional village, and it seems that Hungarians inherited the tradition from Croatians. It’s basically that people dress up in furry masks and go through the village, scaring off winter. You probably can look this part up on the internet. I’m not very familiar with it, until now I thought this was happening all over the country.
Image source: http://www.xn--busjrs-stab2n.hu/
Image source: The Hungarian Girl (website)
What we did on Farsang when I was in elementary school is everybody dressed up in costumes, we had a costume contest and we had some games throughout the school. Usually the classes did some performances (for example, my class did a Smurfs theme one year, we were dancing together and we were very, very blue). So this is the only part that looks like Halloween, and usually this is when parents go creative with the costumes. But no one goes out in them and only kids do it.
Image source: Picasa web album of Reka Bence
Mostly because of globalization and American movies, the younger generation celebrates Halloween with dress-up parties around the 31st, but we’re far less creative than what I saw here. It’s mostly girls dressing slutty or as an angel, and guys putting on a lame shirt, and it’s only been happening for around 5 years (as far as I noticed). This grew into a funny party theme: Truckers and Whores (Kamionosok és Kurvák), which you can imagine what that can be like, and now happens throughout the year.
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Nice to know we Americans are getting other cultures to be more like us. (I’m KIDDING!) My thanks to Réka Bence for her contribution to The Drunken Severed Head.
Related link: Instead of Halloween, Hungarians head to the cemeteries for All Soul’s Day
