Celebrations

From ThreadsOfTime

It is perhaps not at all surprising with all the strife and misery that has plagued Buda-Pest over the centuries that the people throw themselves into every possible celebration with unbridled passion and joy. The following is a list of Celebrations common to the cities within Buda-Pest:

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Funerals

Though dreaded, these inevitable ceremonies are also considered festivals in the sense that they ritualize an event in town life. The dead person's female family members and neighbors make a great show of their sorrow by performing the bocet, an improvised lament based on traditional patterns and formulas. It serves as a sort of conversation with the deceased.

The funeral wake is accompanied by a masked dance in which the participants jump over a fire lit in the farm or home as purification. This usually marks the last farewell to the deceased before the village takes their leave of hi. However, there are times when other rites are performed over the body if there is fear that the deceased might not rest easy in his grave.

From another point of view, Buda-Pest is a small country, and in the 1500's, it was often difficult to find space for graveyards. If a town ran out of places to bury people, it would start to dig up old graves and send the bones to a 'bone house', so that the grave could be reused. When opening coffins, graveyard workers often found scratch marks in the lids of the coffins, suggesting that many people were buried alive. A custom began where the 'corpse' would have a string tied to its wrist, leading up to the surface where it was attached to a bell. Graveyards sometimes hired workers to sit in the graveyard at night (the 'graveyard shift'), listening for bells. Supposedly, someone could have been 'saved by the bell'; if not, they were a 'dead ringer'.

Holidays

St. Stephen’s Day - Szent István napja - In the year of 1000 AD, Hungary’s first king, the Christian St Stephen (István), was crowned this day, and the Hungarian (Magyar) state was founded. Traditionally, the first bread from the new harvest is baked for this day.