Húsvét

Kellemes húsvéti ünnepeket! – Happy Easter!
[Literally::: Pleasant Easter Holidays!]

Húsvét – Easter
..the word Húsvét refers to the “first day when we can eat meat after the Christian Lent” because meat is forbidden during Lent, so “a HÚS magunkhoz VÉTelének első napja”.

On Holy Saturday or Sunday the girls decorate eggs and prepare food for Easter Monday. A typical Easter Monday breakfast menu is: ham, funnily decorated eggs with Piros Arany and some cakes.

On Easter Monday both the girls and the boys dress up (at some places into folk costumes) and then the girls stay home the whole day, waiting for the boys. The boys, if they are little, go with their father, godfather and/or grandfather from house to house and sprinkle the girls. If the boys are older, they go with their friends and do the same.
The girls must be sprinkled, because they are flowers, and as those, they need water to stay fresh, healthy and beautiful. 🙂
So the boys arrive to the girl’s house and the girl opens the door. The boy has to recite a sprinkle-poem (locsolóvers) ending with the question “Szabad-e locsolni? (May I sprinkle?)”, in order to ask for permission from the girl that he can sprinkle her. If the girl likes the poem, she says “Szabad (locsolni).” (you may sprinkle) and then the boy sprinkles her with a glass of water, bucket of water, perfume or anything:::

..after that the girl may or may not kiss the boy on his face and gives the boy a decorated-egg (hímes tojás), chocolate or nowadays also money. Then the girl invites the boy into their house and offers him food, cakes and something to drink. The boy stays there for a while and then leaves to visit an other girl. 🙂
As a boy, I loved this holiday, because I got chocolate, money, food and drink and could hang out with my friends or family the whole day. My sister did not like this day so much.. 😀
There is a new Easter tradition, that is not celebrated anywhere, and it is::: the girls can sprinkle the boys on Easter Tuesday, they can water them, give back the attacks 😀 ..but the girls do not get anything for it.

You can read more about the Hungarian Easter traditions here and here.

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hús – meat; flesh
magához vétele – his/her taking in; his/her ingest(ing)
magához vétet – he/she takes in; he/she ingests [archaic]
magához vesz – he/she takes in; he/she ingests
magához venni – to take in; to ingest
böjt – lent; fast; fasting

locsolás – sprinkling
locsolni – to sprinkle
locsoló – sprinkler
hímes tojás – decorated Hungarian Easter egg
hímzéses tojás – egg with embroidery/ornamentation
hímzés – embroidery
hímezni – to embroider
tojás – egg

virágvasárnap – Palm Sunday
nagycsütörtök – Maundy Thursday
nagypéntek – Good Friday
nagyszombat – Holy Saturday
húsvétvasárnap – Holy Sunday
húsvéthétfő – Easter Monday

virág – flower
nagy – big; great

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The hímes tojás photo is taken from network.hu/martuska54 and belongs to Ádám Márta.
The other photo is taken from The Paprika Project‘s facebook page.