The Christmas dinner usually features fish, especially fried fish and a special Hungarian fish soup. For dessert there is always a wide variety of holiday cookies. One of these is Beiglie, a soft rolled cookie that contains walnuts and poppyseeds.
The holiday season starts with Advent in Hungary, too. Advent wreaths can be seen in stores, schools, offices, and in almost every home. This time of year is the preparation for Christmas. Candles are decorated with red and gold ribbons symbolizing life and brightness. Most children get Advent calendars with a small gift or candie for every day before Christmas. Lights and decoration however stay inside the houses - streets and houses are not as spectacular there as they are in the US. Also, we never decorate a tree before the Holy night. Christmas trees can be seen during advent only in stores symbolizing holiday shopping.
Hungarians decorate trees on the holy night in immediate families. Christmas is a private, family holiday in Hungary, we don't go to parties. Most families decorate the tree together, but some families keep the older tradition that tree should be a surprise for chidren who even believe it was bought by angels. Gifts lay around the tree with small labels saying the name of someone in the family. Family-members sing Christmas songs together, then open their gifts and spend the night together. The menu for Christmas night is usually fish or cabbage with the special poppy-bread called "beigli." Christmas is a 2-day holiday in Hungary. They are proud that it was a 2-day holiday even during communism. This was actually the only thing Hungarians could gain from our lost 1956 war. In the 2 days of Christmas big families meet, often travelling to another town, or maybe very close friends visit each other. But these days are private days of our rush lives. Hungarians stop for 2 days and turn to people they love the most. Christmas is the holiday of love and heart.
There are a lot of folk traditions around Christmas in Hungary- some of them originate from the pre-Christian years, before 1000. The holiday seasons starts with advent which means for us to await for Jesus. The other traditions of these days are either religious or folk customs related to the near future, the harvest of the next year.
In the past few decades most folk traditions has disappeared from real life. It only in the rural small villages where you can find them today. However more and more artist, cultural and folk groups have work on making these tradititions known in their performances, videos or books. December 13th, the name day of Luca has several folk traditions. In Hungary, they celebrate name days rather than birthdays.The day of Luca people start to make a chair from nature wood, which will be done on the day before Christmas. If someone steps on this chair on the way into the church during the mass of Holy Night, he can see who is a witch. There are a few poems and songs about this tradition.The day of Luca is the day of "love predictions," too. In the evening girls used to cast lead in the backyard. The shape of the lead tells the occupations of their future love. This has been fairly common in the recent years.
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