Hungarian Customs

The old tradition is shown on the first two pictures. These photos here show folk costumes that people wear just for special occasions today. Today women wear casual dresses for sprinkling, not folk costumes. Also, men sprinkle with cologne, not with water. A couple of decades ago men poured water on women in rural areas and women changed their clothes after each sprinkling. Boys often dragged girls to the well and poured water on them with pail. Sometimes they washed them in creek.
The possible reason for this very old tradition is that people believed in the cleaning, healing and fertility effect of water.
Easter is a 2-day holiday in Hungary. On Monday boys and men visit all of their women relatives, friends, neighbors, often even if they are not close friends. Boys in small groups, fathers with their sons, or single men leave early in the morning and their "tour" last all day long. They greet girls and women with shorter - longer poems (mostly with a funny poem about "Eastern sprinkling") and sprinkle them with cologne. Women must be well-prepared, they treat men with dessert and beverages - and with hand-painted eggs. Women usually prepare in the previous days by cleaning up the house thoroughly, decorating, cooking and painting a couple dozen eggs.

There is a competition among young girls - who gets the most "sprinklers" wins. It is a shame if the girl is not ready early morning when the first visitor rings the bell.
The result? Women wear more then a dozen of different colognes by Monday evening, and sometimes the alcoholic beverages are harmful for men also. Many times, sprinkling continues on the next day in the working places and we, women wait the evening desperately to wash our hair.

There are many different painting method alive. The simplest way is to cook the egg envelopped into a dented leaf, in painting water. The covered part of the egg remains white and will show the pattern of the leaf.
Painting liquid can be made from onion skin, wild pear, green walnut or other vegetables yielding different natural colors.
Sometimes women "write the egg". They draw folk patterns on the egg by melted wax and put the eggs into painting after this. The egg remains white below the wax and will show the pattern.
But the most beautiful eggs are painted by hand with different colors following traditional folk patterns.

Hungarians not only have birthday, but nameday as well. Birthdays are usually celebrated just in immediate family. Namedays, however are widely known and celebrated. Each acceptable first name is assigned to one or more days of the calendar, based on religious traditions, historical events, birthday of a famous person who had the same first name, or on other facts. Well, in Hungary there are official first names to choose from, - but this is really a big list with almost all of the names that would be a real choice in a Hungarian family. But Hungarian parents must choose a first name from that list to their child.
Namedays are celebrated in work places, among friends and - of course - in the family. People usually give flowers, dessert or small gifts as present. There are smaller or larger parties to celebrate this day. On a day with a popular name you can see people with flowers on the streets, on buses, actually everywhere. You can find today's name on the top of this page, or you can take a look at my monthly tables below.
Another interesting fact is that in Hungary the first name is the last and the last is the first. It means you should change your first and last name to fit Hungarian customs. Famous composer Bela Bartok was called Bartok Bela in Hungarian.
Finally, the name of a woman can be confusing to those unfamiliar with this custom. The bride has a chance to choose from 3 possibilities.

1. She may keep her maiden name in the marriege.

2. She may keep her last name (that is first in English) and uses her husband's
first name. This is similar to the customs in other countries and has become more and more popular recently.

3. By the old Hungarian custom, the bride got the entire name of her groom with a -ne suffix at the and. Even though she was called by her previous first name no one could find it out from her official name.

One of the oldest folk-art is the pottery. Pottery is not used in the everyday-life, but almost everyone have some for decoration. Native motives are different in different parts of the country. Pottery has been more common in the last years.

Leader-goods are important part of folk-art. These scourges would decorate your house well. Horsebreeding is an old Hungarian tradition. hungarian horses are parts of international trade today too.

Hungary is also famous for its "paprika" too. Hungarian 'paprika' is the most important ingredient of many Hungarian dishes,the very beatyful native dresses,and the folk-bands which you can find them in native restaurants playing folk-songs and the "gypsy-music".