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Hungarian people traditions in the end of year

© Haragos Pal

(Part One)

I would like to show you some interesting people traditions are connected to the end of the year.

Santa Claus Santa Claus (Nicholaus) was a bishop of Myra in the end of the 3rd century. According to his legend a poor family lived in Myra with two young girls. They had not enough money for food so the girls should had sent out to serve. In that night Nicholaus went to their house and put a sack of gold out their window in order to kept the family together. In memory of Nicholaus, Hungarian children put out their cleaned boots into their windows on the evening of the 5th of December. At night Santa Claus (or their parents) fills these boots with peanuts, nuts, orange and chocolate. Naughty children get birch-rod as well.

The chair of Luca (Lucia) This is an old Hungarian popular tradition, which is date back to the Middle Ages when people believed in witches. If someone wanted to know who was a witch in his village he had to make the chair of Luca. On the 13th of December had to begin the work. He had to make a chair during the next 13 days from 13 pieces made by 13 different types of wood. Every day he added only one piece into the chair. The work finished on the 24th of December before the midnight mass. (A Hungarian idiom says if something is made very slowly: 'It is being made like the chair of Luca.') The chair maker took the chair and a handful poppy-seed along into the Midnight Mass of Christmas Eve, where he stand up on the chair to recognise who was a witch. When a witch noticed this, the chair maker had to run out the church. If the witch pursued him he would scatter poppy-seed over to rescue himself because the witch had to collect every poppy-seed. This is an old tradition, but if you want to know whether a witch lives in your town, make a chair of Luca and try it.

Advent Advent is a 4 weeks period before Christmas, which is a church festival. In this time people are preparing their spirits for Christmas. The festival begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas Eve and many families make a wreath for Advent, which they decorated with branch of pine and four candles, (one for each week). The first candle is lit on the first Sunday of Advent and on each following Sunday a further one so that by Christmas all four candles are lit. In evenings families are sitting around the Advent's wreath to prepare their spirits for the nicest family festival.

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