Somorjai József szerk.: Komárom – Esztergom Megyei Múzeumok Közleményei 4. (Tata, 1991)

Néprajz - Tisovszki-Zsuzsanna: Az esztendő jeles napjai, ünnepei Komárom-Esztergom megye magyar községeiben

The Outstanding Days and Holidays of the Year in the Hungarian Communities of Komárom - Esztergom County Zsuzsanna Tisovszki In the study the author wants to present the calendaristic habits and holidays of 17 villages of the county and of Szentgyörgymező, which now is part of Esztergom. Itwouldhavebeendifficulttogiveacomprihensivepicture of these settlements because all of them were clustered round four big centers, as they still are, such as: Tata, Komárom, Dorog and Esztergom. The row of the Hungarian villages is interrupted not in one place by nationality villages or by mixed nationality villages /Hungarian-German, HungarianSlovakian/, so we can observe less similarities and more differences as to the tradition of the outstanding days. The religious holidays are obviously exceptions: the religious ceremonies, processions, lay traditions of ecclesiastical origin /Nativity plays/ are nearly the same in all the Catholic villageg. /On the territory examined the population is mostly of Roman Catholic religion/. Presenting briefly the communities /Samu Borovszky's data from the first decade of our century/ the presentation of the winter, spring, summer and autumn holidays follows. The four chapters, even in their proportions, express that in the Hungarian villages the most outstanding days of winter /from Advent to Ash-Wednesday/, and within these the most outstanding holidays of the year, are Christmas days. Here are included the name-days of András /Andrew/, Miklós /Nicholas/, Luca, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve /Sylvester/, Twelfth-day, Candlemas day, Balázs 's /Blase/ day, the Carneval Time, as well as Mátyás's /Mattew/day. After Carneval's day, which is the burrial of winter, the most outstanding events and traditionsofthespringholidaysarepresented,fromtheLenttoMedard'sday.Thischapter is about such traditions as: pussiwillow consecration on Palm Sunday, Holly Week, Easter's Monday, Easter's Tuesday, as well as Saint George's day, Saint Mark's day, the tradition of errecting festooned wood, Witsun days, Lord's day, Orbán's day and Medárd' s day. In the summer period there are very few outstanding days. On Peter's and Paul's day the harvesting begins and summer is dominated by agricultural labour. In many places Sarlós Boldogasszony's day/The Blessed Virgin with Side/ is celebrated. The Ur színváltása /The Change of Colour of the Lord/ is celebrated in many places. The Catholic communities have a procession on Holly Virgin's Day. Autumn is characterized by the farming traditions, such as vintage, maise stripping, dinners on pig-killing day. In this chapter Vendel's, Simon-Judas's day, All Soul's day, as well as Martin's day, which ends the autumn, are presented. In the Annals of the Museum I publish fragments from the above presented paper: one can read about the spring holidays. 204