The Eighth Hungarian Tribe, 1987 (14. évfolyam, 1-8. szám)

1987-07-01 / 7-8. szám

bread is neatly stacked, putting drippings on each one in turn. It's a very efficient American system. This is the visual synthesis, that unfortunately I cannot show you. or the contrast between them. Both however, have the communal atmosphere, a sense of solidarity, both are interesting, and both fit the environment in which they evolved. The important thing is that the custom is meaningful and functional. In both what remains continuous is having a good time with friends and family, having a good time, getting together socially, and this is important. Getting together cross-generationally, meaning it's not just the people of one age group that get together, but it brings together parents, grandparents, grandchildren. It's again a number of families. So, it's an across-generation activity. Maybe this part is diminishing in Birmingham, I am not sure. It depends on families but in this sense it is different that what we encounter in the rest of society, where people often segregate themselves by age groups. (If you are teenagers, you think what those old timers have to show me is not as important as going somewhere else.) In this sense the sütni is a cross-generational bond which, because it is enjoyable to all, tends to perpetuate that type of social cohesiveness.

I was also going to mention the Easter sprinkling custom, but I think I am running out of time. So, just a few words. That custom is an original peasant custom; it is not a carry-over from the middle class.

The "locsolás’’ (sprinkling) is a very ancient custom. It's probably really a pagan custom that has been Christianized, because the very custom itself, the sprinkling of girls and the sprinkling of boys, because it is reciprocal, is indicative of behavior regarding the reciprocal relations of the two sexes. The first Monday after Easter Sunday the boys went out and sprinkled the girls, and then the next day the girls reciprocated. This particular custom, think of when it happens, at Easter, and think of the important relation to the Easter egg and to the reward that the boys got from the girls for the sprinkling. But the egg was always the symbol of fertility, and so in terms of its origin, in terms of going back centuries, the whole custom for certain was linked to rituals, linked to fertility in pagan tradition, and it has been carried over and has become civilized. It has become a ritualized activity which also has become a lot of fun. And, it was carried over into the villages where generally right after Easter Sunday the girls would be dragged out to the well and held under a whole bucket of water. It wasn’t just little perfume bottles that the middle class boys used in Hungary.

The girls did the same thing to the boys the next time around. Of course, they didn’t have to drag them to the well. They

had to catch them unaware as they walked around a corner, but this activity in being transmitted to Birmingham, I’m not sure if it didn't lose that bucket of water effect. It now has the water balloon effect! I have one oral history I collected from one of the ladies here. She remembered, she said, that this healthy aspect was here too for a while. She tells me she was dumped in the horse trough over where Tony Packo's restaurant now stands. There was a horse trough there and that's how she was "sprinkled". Well, the point is that this

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type of experience added color, added a different dimension to the lives of people on these special occasions when a major event was celebrated, in this case on Easter. In other instances, at Christmas or whatever holiday we are talking about, in each instance this folk involvement gave meaning to the lives of people living in a real ethnic community. At the present time it is still alive for some in the neighborhood of Birmingham, and it is still important for many as part of a rich storehouse of memories.

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NEWS IN BRIEF

Two-foot-9 MIHÁLY ‘Michu’ Mészáros, a circus veteran who played television’s “ALF,” paid $6,000 to have the thirdshortest street in Hawthorne, California, named after him.

“I just showed him the street on the map and he said ‘That’s me,”’ said Dennis Varga, Mészáros’ friend and business partner. “He was ready to bid up to $100,000.00.” But Mészáros, 47, paid only $6,000 to have 125th Street renamed Michu Lane at the Chamber of Commerce fund-raiser. The one-third-blocklong street was formally renamed so.

The 35-pound Hungarian-born actor moved to Hawthorne in 1985 after spending much of his life on the road with circuses. He started work on the “ALF” pilot last spring. The producers asked Mészáros and Varga to keep ALF’s identity a secret, but they defied the ban when the producers decided to phase out Mészáros after the first season.

ETHNIC MINORITIES IN ROMANIA

The millions of Hungarians, Germans and other minorities in Romania suffer under double burden. They endure the crushing hardships of the nation with Eastern Europe’s lowest standard of living, and they allegedly singled out for attacks on their ethnic identity.

On April 30, the House of Representatives voted to suspend Romania’s ‘most-favored-nation status’, on June 26, the Senate also voted on the suspension favorably. Hungarian and other emigre organizations as well as Western Human Rights monitoring groups has solidly backed the action of the Congress, claiming that preferential treatment of Romania by the United States should depend on a demonstrated respect for human rights as enshrined in the Helsinki accord, to which Romania was a signatory. Even within the Warsaw Pact nations, those who think the Ceausescu regime is not nice are becoming increasingly bold about airing their grievances. Spokesmen for the Hungarian government have telken up the issue of human rights in Transylvania at the international forums at the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. They have broken ranks with their Eastern-block Allies by endorsing Western Statements of censure. The head of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry have deplored alleged policies of “forced assimilation and restrictive tutelage” over ethnic minorities. Although they stopped short of explicitly naming Romania as the culprit, have let no doubt in the minds of Romanian officials.