Hunglish.orgFarsang: Kinda like Halloween, kinda like another excuse to dress up goofily, this holiday season is 100% Hungarian.
written by Scott Savoie
Farsang is sort of a Hungarian winter holiday period that preceeds Lent.
To celebrate the holiday, there are nuberous balls and costume parties; in this way, it’s a bit like Halloween in the ’States. Unlike Halloween, however, there is no concensus of exactly when the Farsang parties begin and end – though Wikipedia says it goes from January 6th through Mardi Gras – so you can expect to see a few ridiculously dressed people from about the end of January through February.
One story is that the the point of the holiday is to scare away winter.
One of the most colorful celebrations of the holiday is the Mohács Busójárás. This is when Hungarians dress up like animals in some freaky ritual that, in one story, was supposed to have scared away the Turks. It might have worked.
Hungarians seems reluctant to talk about this holiday much. One wonders if this second, scare-away-the-foreigners meaning is more important than „scaring away winter,” which doesn’t even make sense.
At any rate, someone should make a horror movie with „farsang” in the title.
Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.