Traditional Hungarian methods to decorate Easter eggs – PHOTOS, VIDEOS

Easter is celebrated in Christian communities all over the world, but many countries have their own set of traditions on how to celebrate it. In modern days, these traditions are slowly fading into oblivion and capitalistic products are taking over to satisfy demand. Today we are taking a look at traditional Hungarian methods to decorate easter eggs and a little history on the tradition itself.

Probably the most well-known Hungarian tradition around Easter time is “locsolkodás” or watering. During Easter, young girls are splashed with a bucket of water. This is a symbolical tradition and a fertility ritual of sorts.

The tradition in Hungary is so well-embedded and important for Hungarians that it has become a Hungarikum. You can read more about it HERE.

As for the Easter Eggs, there are a few concepts of where they might come from. Usually, women who get splashed will give different coloured eggs to young men who splashed them. In more modern traditions, the different colours could symbolise different things, red meaning love, green meaning friendship and yellow meaning something negative. However, originally there were only red eggs and it was believed that the blood of Jesus dropped on a basket of eggs is what had coloured them. No matter what the truth might be, the art of decorating Easter Eggs is something truly beautiful to behold.

Nowadays you can easily buy pre-painted eggs by the dozens and there are a lot of products you can use to colour eggs to any shade you want, but

the traditional Hungarian methods would include different plants that needed to be boiled to colour the eggs.

The longer you leave the egg in the colouring water, the more vivid the colour gets. According to Színesötletek, these are the plants to achieve the desired colour:

• Red – (dried) petals of common hollyhock (the black or the red variant), the boiled berries of rosehip usually create a nice pinkish colour.
• Brown – dried and browned husk of walnuts, also dried onion and red onion peels. The latter can also create a purplish colour.
• Yellow and Brown – the peels of onions can create reddish-brown hues and if you add alum, you can achieve bright yellows.
• Yellow – you can achieve yellow hues with calendula and saffron but also from buds and young twigs of apple trees.
• Green – you can use nettle, spinach and the green berries of European black elderberry to achieve hues of green.
• Purple – you can use grated beats, flowers of an aspen tree with alum and red cabbage.