HAPPY EASTER

Easter Eggs from Vienna, hope you get lots. LL

Oh, they're lovely!

Hoping that this is the last Easter without Madeleine.

Hoping that Madeleine returns safe and sound ASAP.

Indeed, Pedro.

Will you be taking part in the semana santa services?

I will attend mass, praying of course for Madeleine McCann´s safe return.

There are a lot of interesting folk customs still alive all over Hungary. Many of them are connected with religious holidays, while others have older origins, from early, sometimes from prehistoric years. The two, most known customs of Easter are the "sprinkling" and the egg-painting. Both are very common in both urban and rural areas, among people of every age-group.


Sprinkling





The old tradition is shown in the above pictures. These photos show folk costumes that people wear just for special occasions today. Today women wear casual dresses for sprinkling, not folk costumes. Also, men sprinkle with cologne, not with water. A couple of decades ago men poured water on women in rural areas and women changed their clothes after each sprinkling. Boys often dragged girls to the well and poured water on them with a pail. Sometimes they washed them in the creek.
The possible reason for this very old tradition is that people believed in the cleaning, healing and fertility effect of water.

Easter is a 2-day holiday in Hungary. On Monday boys and men visit all of their women relatives, friends, neighbors, often even if they are not close friends. Boys in small groups, fathers with their sons, or single men leave early in the morning and their "tour" last all day long. They greet girls and women with shorter - longer poems (mostly with a funny poem about "Eastern sprinkling") and sprinkle them with cologne. Women must be well-prepared, they treat men with dessert and beverages - and with hand-painted eggs. Women usually prepare in the previous days by cleaning up the house thoroughly, decorating, cooking and painting a couple dozen eggs.

There is a competition among young girls - who gets the most "sprinklers" wins. It is a shame if the girl is not ready early morning when the first visitor rings the bell.
The result? Women wear more then a dozen of different colognes by Monday evening, and sometimes the alcoholic beverages are harmful for men also. Many times, sprinkling continues on the next day in the working places and women wait the evening desperately to wash their hair.

These are from an area of Northern Germany, near Berlin, from a town called Schleife, which is where the small Sorbian community sometimes called Wends, and related to the Eastern Serbs, have lived for centuries. LL

Those are fabulous eggs, LL. Thanks for posting the pictures and the stories of the traditions.

I myself have many painted eggs which I have collected in L.A. for years and which come out at Easter.

They are lovely LL. Thank you

Makes us seem boring in the UK. Mind you a Thorntons chocolate Easter egg takes a bit of beating





For those able to eat sweet things. HUH!

You won't believe what's in here. Two gorillas at Howletts Wild Animal Park, Kent, examine a chocolate egg

More cuteness at:

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Jesus. Please don't do this this to me. I really don't want to know that Apes are more all together than Humans.

They are all a bit odd around here. Not my idea of Easter, and I have lived here for a very long time. But Good Friday is by the by. It is a working day, and of no real importance to anyone. It is only The Resurrection that matters, come Sunday. No one wants to know about what really happened. Or didn't.

All a pile of crap, of course. And presuming that one believes, or not. But just supposing some idiot called Jesus thought that the death of Him would save the World then I can only suppose that Jesus was a fool.
Two Thousand years and we have still got no where at all. Merci beaucoup Mon Seigneur. I am as daft as you are.