Easter Monday, "Sprinkling" the Women

Zöld erdőben jártam
Kék ibolyát láttam
El akart hervadni
Szabad-e locsolni?

Locsolkodás after the Easter Monday church service

Today I was immersed, quite literally, in a Hungarian Easter custom: Locsolkodás. The word means sprinkling and it's a folk tradition practiced on Monday, which is considered the second day of Easter. Basically, it goes like this: boys visit girls in their homes. They recite a verse (like the one below), then spritz some perfume on them. The girls then reward them with chocolate, eggs painted bright red, or pálinka, a fruit brandy. Traditionally, in place of perfume, the boys doused the girls with buckets of water. I'm glad the tradition's evolved to perfume (though not always--I started my morning by being lured into the kitchen and doused with a cup full of water. The culprit, a friend of mine, got wetter coming over to my house in the pouring rain than I did, though!)

Everywhere I went today (and it was a busy day--with two church services and visits to four different homes), there were people partaking in the tradition. The most priceless was three little boys, aged 5-13, who recited a poem for me when I came to visit and then all took turns spritzing me with perfume.

By the end of the day, I'd been sprayed with generous amounts of perfume six or seven times--and, as you can imagine, with the different scents mixing together, I was eager to take a shower! But it was a fun tradition, and I'm glad I got to share in it.

Another highlight from the day was an Easter Monday service in a lovely little (seating room for 18, max.) church with no electricity in a nearby village. Probably what brought the biggest smile to my face was paying another visit to the family I mentioned in my last blog post. They had invited me back again today, and apparently the kids kept asking when I was going to arrive. I had fun playing some little games with them, and they taught me some Roma dancing! It was amazing to see their little feet move, especially the youngest, who's a tiny little guy, but quite the little dancer!

It's definitely been a memorable Easter here in Hungary!

P.S. The poem at the beginning of this post is basically about walking in the woods, seeing "Blue Violet," meaning the flower but also referring to a girl's name, and asking permission to "sprinkle" her to keep her from wilting.

Happy Easter! Boldog Húsvéti Ünnepeket!

It's Easter Sunday and Easter so far can't be summarized as anything less than delightful. I've just come back from a truly joyful visit with a lovely Roma family from the village. I know the grandmother from Bible study, and at the morning service she invited me to stop by in the afternoon. She's been inviting me for some time because, in her words, she wanted to "show me how they live."

Her four grandchildren are in town for Easter, and they won my heart in no time at all, especially the five-year-old, who was full of giggles and liked playing peek-a-boo with me around the corner. I brought some Easter party crackers for them, and they loved them, especially the crowns. Somehow I was roped into singing a couple songs, and before long, they wanted to learn an English song, so I taught the kids "Jesus Loves Me." They picked it up really fast, and even though the words weren't always intelligible, it was priceless. Then they taught me some Hungarian children's and folk songs, which I'm afraid I took much longer to learn than they did!

Yesterday afternoon we had our weekly Bible school and "tanoda" with the kids. We decorated Easter eggs--which was fun, if not chaotic--and went for a little "field trip" down to the river bank. The kids were so full of energy. I love their vigor for life. When we got back, we set them loose searching for candy that I'd hid around the yard earlier while Péter did the Bible lesson with them. I think I was even more excited to see them search for the candies than they were to find them


Easter celebrations began last night, already, with Easter supper with the pastor's family at her mother's home (which happens to be right next door to me). I was with them for Easter lunch today, too. They have family visiting for Easter, and it was fun to have kids around. Earlier in the day, after tanoda, we decorated eggs together. Traditional Hungarian Easter eggs are red in colour. In fact, they call decorated eggs "piros tojás" (red eggs) even when they're not red. A custom I really like is that a lot of families have beautifully decorated eggs (wooden or ceramic I think) hanging on ribbons on the branches of trees outdoors. I love it. The húsvéti nyuszi (Easter Bunny) even visited me and left some decorated eggs and chocolate on my door step last night! I strongly suspect it was Erzsi, the pastor.
Easter really is magnificent here, because spring is in full bloom. The grass is green, the leaves are beginning to appear on the trees, and there are daffodils, and violets, and hyacinths everywhere! The cherry trees in bloom are my favourite--I intentionally took this route today so I could walk by the cherry blossoms. How I would love a yard full of cherry trees some day!