Torsello, Davide - Pappová, Melinda: Social Networks in Movement. Time, interaction and interethnic spaces in Central Eastern Europe - Nostra Tempora 8. (Somorja-Dunaszerdahely, 2003)
Time and social networks
Managing instability 77 When I go back downstairs, the school girls are still singing Hungarian pop songs. 10.30 pm: the performance starts. A village group called Féktelenek (“breakless“) performs a series of humoristic sketches. Some of them I know from a popular Hungarian TV cabaret program. They all play with double-senses, misunderstandings and often very heavy sexual jokes. People laugh a lot. Some of them know these jokes already and they anticipate them at their own tables. Some people are drunk, but they behave well. No shouting or other forms of noise. The rigid family tables are finally starting to dissolve. Young people go outside for smokes, upstairs for drinks or to joke around. The music starts (12 am); the old people leave. We all dance and sing. The atmosphere on St Stephen’s night is dominated by two concurrent elements: the organized participation and grouping according to family and kin membership and the gathering of friends and acquaintances. The latter is more spontaneous than the former, but the two are hardly extricable. Many young villagers took part in the evening together with their families and in this case they were clearly divided between remaining seated in an orderly manner at their tables and going outside or upstairs to join their friends. During the formal part of the event and the banquet all participants were seated at their tables. This was the most "tense" moment, when the speeches reminded the attendants of the formalities of the evening and when being with one’s own family meant behaving in a proper way. Afterwards, the music and the first effects of the alcohol marked the beginning of the second part, when less formal behaviour was allowed. The most interesting aspect of the celebration was the way in which fun and proper behaviour intermingled and became disentangled throughout the event. All participants seemed concerned about their behaviour as they were required to perform on an open stage, before the eyes of the village. The large family tables constituted extremely close and intimate clusters and the fact that very few moved from
