Hungarian Conservative

President Joe Biden issued a declaration marking 31 March as ‘Transgender Day of Visibility’. While that day has always been held by some odd people on that date, this year it coincided with Easter Sunday, causing outrage among many Christians in the United States.

Easter is the most solemn celebration in the Christian world, commemorating the redemptive death on the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In addition to egg-painting and sprinkling water, there are many folk customs and traditions associated with Easter, which you can read below in the collection of Magyar Krónika.

In Reform Era Hungary, on Easter Monday in the countryside maidens would be grabbed by boys, dragged to the nearest river and ‘dipped’ in it. If there was no river nearby, they would be taken to wells, laid in troughs and doused with cold water. On more than one occasion the poor girls would get a stroke from the cold water or die of pneumonia a few days later.

‘This is the message of Easter. Sharing the most ordinary beautiful experiences with each other: that is transforming the world. It just takes courage. For believers and non-believers alike. We should respect each other. Because none of us can create life. Destroy it, all the more.’

‘Easter, just like Christmas, has been trivialized in various parts of the world. There seems to be more attention given to spending time with the Easter bunny or going on an Easter egg hunt, as opposed to going to church to partake of the Paschal mystery. Easter has become inconsequential because the modernist message focuses on pleasure, instead of joy or fulfilment; and the latter can only be arrived at by bearing our daily cross.’

The four-day holiday festival in Hollókő, Hungary will feature traditional Easter festivities such as ‘rattling,’ ‘locsolkodás,’ and egg colouring; as well as professional folk musicians giving live performances. The Old Village of Hollókő has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1987.

Among the foods eaten in Italy at Easter, Gianni Annoni highlighted lamb, which is mainly imported from Hungary. He added that eggs are also important, used to decorate savoury cakes, especially in southern Italy, along with spring vegetables and Easter desserts.

Our Lenten traditions include some elements that promote cooperation, while others are about cleaning up our environment or purifying our bodies and souls. By transposing these into the present day we may gather much needed strength in these difficult times.

‘Looking at the stories, or the food, rituals and traditions surrounding them, Passover and Easter couldn’t be more different at first sight. But if we look closely, we can see that Passover and Easter are intimately linked on many levels.’

Learning how much we have already achieved during the past two millennia gives us strength, says Csaba Böjte. An interview about the foundations of European Christianity, childcare and the purpose of human life.

‘For I was the Doubting, the unbeliever:
I believed you were no more, no more than a figment,
and dipping my faithless fingers into your wound,
I know what the resurrection of the body means,
and I cannot speak, I only stammer:
I am Hungarian.’

Even though The Innocence of Pontius Pilate by David Lloyd Dusenbury offers no mystic resolution of Pilate’s drama, the philosophical conclusions it draws from the trial of Jesus are indeed far-reaching.

The four-day Hollókő Easter Festival includes folk programs, Palóc cuisine, bucket-dumping water fights, Kerekes Band and Parno Graszt concerts, as well as children’s programmes.

His Holiness was treated for bronchitis last week, after he had breathing difficulties as he finished his public audience in St Peter’s Square. His health thankfully won’t be impairing him during his busy Holy Week duties, nor on his Apostolic Journey to Hungary.

A most typically Holy Week prayer, known as The Golden Lord’s Prayer, is one of the most beloved meditative prayers of the religious Catholic women of Hungary. In it, Jesus tells his mother, Mary what awaits him on the days of the Holy Week. As far as we know, the origin of the prayer is unclear, but it appears to have been already known by Hungary’s ethnic Germans as early as in the 15th century.

According to Hungarian folk belief, those who receive the ashes on Ash Wednesday will be free from headaches for quite a while. In the olden days, there was even a Hungarian folk tradition according to which people returning home from church rubbed their foreheads with those who stayed at home, to help them avoid headaches.