Agria 42. (Az Egri Múzeum Évkönyve - Annales Musei Agriensis, 2006)

Lukács László: Szép karácsony szép zöld fája. A karácsonyfa elterjedése

László Lukács The Spread of the Christmas Tree in Hungary In Hungary, in Buda and Pest, the first Christmas trees were put up at the end of the 1820s by aristocrats with strong family connections with Germany and Austria. The fashion for putting up Christmas trees was brought to Budapest from Vienna by Countess Teréz Brunszvik: by 1828 a Christmas tree was already being put up in the kindergarten she had founded in the suburb of Krisztinaváros. A Christmas tree was also put up in the kindergarten in Nagyszombat (now Trnava, Slovakia) in 1832. According to Baron Frigyes Podmaniczky's diary it was his Dresden-born mother, the daughter of a Saxon royal minister, who brought the Christmas tree to Pest in 1828. In Hungary the tradition of putting up Christmas trees only took off in the years following the 1848-49 War for Freedom. Previous to that the Hungarian provincial aristocracy had not adopted the custom. In the second half of the 1850s we know that there was a Christmas tree standing in the country house of Imre Madách in Alsósztregova, Nógrád County. The 1849 emigration also played a role in the increased familiarity with and spread of the custom in Hungary. Emigrants in Germany and Belgium became acquainted with a custom that was already deeply rooted. Baron Miklós Jósika wrote to Miklós Fejérvári from Belgium in 1857 saying they really liked Christmas trees and that they had put one up themselves. Returning to Hungary after the 1857 amnesty, the one-time emigrants also put Christmas trees up in their own houses. Although the custom spread comparatively quickly in the capital and Transdanubia, it was much slower to catch on in the villages. By the 1860s fir tree markets were already being organised in the square in front of the old Pest town hall. In the final third of the 19th century it was primarily the rural protestant priests, the primary school teachers, the local government officials and the families of those working on the estates who had Christmas trees. In the second half of the 19th century it was the writers and illustrators of children's literature and the illustrated press that popularised the custom among the urban populations. Often domestic servants and their children received presents from the lord of the manor. It was in this way that both indoor and outdoor staff on the country estates became acquainted with the Christmas tree. They also started to appear in churches too. Hungarian soldiers in the imperial and royal regiments would have become familiar with the custom from their fellow soldiers. By the beginning of the 20th 377