It is still Carnival Season in Hungary, so I thought I drop a few lines about it, because it is quite interesting, I love this tradition since my childhood.
The carnival season (Farsang) traditionally starts on Epiphany (January 6th) and ends on Ash Wednesday (which is February 14th in 2018). I love this tradition, it is marked by masquerade balls and all sorts of noisy parades that are organized with the aim to fray and scare off winter and welcome spring. The most popular and probably the most interesting of all these traditional festivals is organized in Mohács, it is called Busójárás (Busó Festival).
"The busos, wearing big sheepskin costumes and horned wooden masks make an impressive entrance: they arrive in rowboats from across the Danube and parade through the city, making noise with cowbells and rattles, to scare away winter. Some of them arrive riding fantastical motorized or horse-drawn vehicles. Their helpers, the 'Jankele', are groups of children roaming the streets, dressed in rags and wearing stockings for masks, who carry sacks filled with rags to give a playful beating to the girls. In the evening the celebrations concentrate around the huge bonfire in the main square of Mohács, where a coffin symbolizing winter is burned, while over 500 busos dance around in a circle, making an even bigger racket, just to make sure that winter will definitely not come back."
I took this paragraph from here you can read more about it if you are interested. It is really cool, absolutely worth a visit if you are in Hungary in a Carnival season.
Another reason why I love Carnival is because this is the season of the year when we eat a lot of doughnuts. We even call this fluffy one "carnival doughnut", I love it. I already posted the recipe here.
From my childhood, I remember the fancy dress parties we used to have at this time of the year. This was the period we enjoyed the most. Here are some of the fancy dresses of my kids from their elementary school. Luckily we had wonderful school teachers who were very creative in finding out not only costumes but even a choreography and a little dance show, too.
Mouse
Smurfs
Chimney sweepers and dancing girls
Firedance
Soldiers
So happy Carnival Season!