Sara’s blog about the researching rural community development in Balaton-felvidék

Holidays in Hungary! How does an American family celebrate the winter holidays in Hungary? Well, for starters, we tried to follow the lead of our Hungarian friends! We baked lots of cookies, attended many, many Karacsonyt Piac here in Sumeg and in other parts of the country, we talked with the butcher about what to make for dinner on Christmas Eve and Christmas, and with a lot of help from our friends at the Éltetõ Balaton-felvidékért we got a lovely Karacsony fa for our flat! We didn’t have many decorations to make our home look festive so we made snowflakes and paper chains, got candles, and added a few small decorations. We were very surprised when arriving home one night to find a small box of ornaments at our door! What a lovely treat- a friend loaned us beautiful decorations, and at last our home was festive! The kids were thrilled and very excited for Christmas to finally come, just as they always are excited in the USA.

We received a special visitor over the holidays and were able to share many of the new traditions we were learning about with our guest. For example, she helped us trim the tree on Christmas Eve (we usually do this in early December at home!), the kids taught her Hungarian holiday songs they learned at school, and of course we introduced her to some locally made pork sausages, pastries, cheeses, and sweets! She also found a szaloncukor flavor of  that she liked, and took some home as gifts.

Happy New Year to you and your family, I hope you enjoyed the holiday season as much as we did this year!