Death has  a holiday

Budapest’s cemeteries, always worth a visit, take on a somberly festive glow for All Saint’s Day

By Bob Cohen

Once the warm days of summer fade, it seems that every holiday is but another desperate chance to get outdoors before winter arrives. In Hungary, the defining day of the fall season is All Saints Day, falling on the first of November. As the trees shed their last leaves and chill winds blow down the Danube, thousands flock to the cemeteries to pay respect for the dead. Recognized as a national holiday, All Saints Day is observed throughout Central Europe with a fervor that surpasses many other religious holidays.

In Budapest, Nov. 1 is an excellent time to visit the cemeteries, when the quiet, but not-unfestive, crowd fills the early evening air with aromatic flowers and warm candlelight. But even if you miss the day itself, that’s no reason to miss the striking monuments and unique Hungarian-style headstones that fill the city’s wonderfully landscaped cemeteries. It’s a fascinating way to get a different view of the country’s history.

Although All Saints Day is often overshadowed in English speaking countries by Halloween on October 31, there is a significant difference between the two days. All Saints Day is an official, and sanctified Christian Holiday, whereas Halloween is rooted in the ancient Druidic practices of the pagan Celts. The carved pumpkin Jack o’ Lanterns, the conical witches hats and the practice of trick-or-treat that marks Halloween are conspicuously absent in Central Europe. “Halloween” is actually a shortened version of the old English “All Hallows’ Even,” the eve of All Hallows’ Day. “Hallow” is Old English for “holy person,” and thus, All Hallows’ Day is simply another name for All Saints Day.

While Hungary is overwhelmingly Christian, with Catholics and Calvinist Protestants claiming the largest congregations, Hungarians can not be described as fanatic church goers. Most religious Holidays, such as Christmas and Easter, are celebrated as family get-togethers over a hefty meal. All Saints Day is ideal for those whose church attendance occasionally lags, since All Saints Day is a universal day that honors and remembers all Christian saints, and its observance makes up for the possibility that a believer has missed adoring a few saints during the previous year.

The pre-Christian origins of All Saints Day and Halloween date back to Samhain, the ancient Celtic New Year. Samhain, meaning “end of summer,” occurred after harvest around the end of October. The Celts believed the world of the living was closest to the world of the dead at the time of Samhain, and that the spirits of the dead traveled again among the living.

The early Church pursued a policy of incorporating non-Christian traditions into its holidays in order to attract people into the faith. This included moving the dates of Christian holidays to those of established non-Christian occasions. Pope Boniface IV originally proclaimed May 13, 610, Feast of All Holy Martyrs. In 835, however, Pope Gregory IV changed the date and name to November 1 and Feast of All Saints. When All Saints’ Day moved to November 1, the Church began to incorporate Samhain traditions into the holy day’s activities.

Hungarians, however, are not Celts, and the symbols of druidism held little meaning for the recently converted Magyars of the tenth century. Hungarian folk tradition contains many historical layers, and one of the oldest dates back to the ancient shamanic tradition brought by the early Magyars from the Eurasian steppes. The figure of the Hungarian táltos, a shaman who could assume the shape of a totemic animal, eventually developed into the more recent role of the halottlátó, or “death seer,” usually an elderly woman who could communicate with the souls of the recently departed. One well known death seer operated out of the village of Putnok well into the 1970s, after winning a famous court case that allowed her to become an officially designated – and therefore legally taxable – bridge to the afterworld.

VISITING BUDAPEST’S CEMETERIES

Modern Hungarians, however, tend to revere their dearly departed without actively speaking to them. All Souls Day comes conveniently the next day, so the devout can celebrate the two festivals on Nov. 1, by attending mass and then visiting the cemeteries. Even those who missed mass may go out to remember the dead, by tending to graves and lighting candles. Flower sellers line up shoulder to shoulder at cemetery entrances for their biggest day of the year. At nightfall, the cemeteries shimmer with the light of thousands of flickering candles.

Of all Budapest’s cemeteries, none can surpass the Kerepesi Cemetery for grandeur. Where Paris has Pere Lachaise, and London has Highgate, Budapest has Kerepesi. Located in Pest on Fiume utca, about 10 minutes walk south of Keleti station, it is an island of quiet, lush parkland in the midst of the urban Eighth District. Kerepesi cemetery is the final resting place of many of Hungary’s most influential and historical figures. The ongoing joke is that if you are buried here, then there is a street named after you somewhere in Budapest.

No mere boneyard, Kerepesi was declared a “decorative cemetery” in 1885, and it has grown into a vast public monument, highlighted by statues and architectural works from many of Hungarian history’s greatest artists. Beautifully laid out paths and avenues lead to impressive mausoleums nesting beside more modest gravesites. Some of the simpler graves here are marked by the archaic carved wooden funerary markers known as kopfa, which date back to the Uralic origins of the ancient Magyars, who carved boat shaped grave markers, to symbolize the need to journey over the river of death.

Revolutionary hero Lajos Kossuth is interred here, his resting place marked by an impressive mausoleum. Also here are Count Lajos Batthany, Ferenc Deak, and other notables from Hungary’s rebellious 19th century. Less revered by modern Hungarians, former Communist party leader János Kádár, who died in 1989, lies in a rather plain grave near the huge mausoleum housing various departed Communist party hacks.

Hungary’s first democratically elected prime minister, József Antall, who died while still in office in 1993, has a dramatic, modernistic memorial, featuring savage-looking statues that seem incongruous with the comparatively gentle man they commemorate.

Another one of the more ornate memorials is for Blaha Lujza, the populist actress who lent her name to one of Pest’s main squares. Here she is depicted in a French bed, surrounded by adoring cherubs. After the fall of communism, poet Jozsef Attila was reburied in Kerepesi with great ceremony by lovers of poetry, who were angry that he had been previously reburied in a special communist artist’s cemetery.

Most artists and intellectuals, however, seem to gravitate toward Buda’s Farkasréti Cemetery (Buda XI, Németvölgyi utca 99. Take the 59 tram from Moszkva tér).

Both Béla Bartok and Zoltán Kodaly are buried here, and the impressive mortuary chapel designed by Imre Makovecz is worth the trip. On Nov. 1, large crowds of family, friends, admirers and former students line up to place candles and flowers on the graves of the great composers.

Elsewhere in the world, November’s first two days can be celebrated quite differently. Mexico comes to mind, where the Day of the Dead has become a raucous national holiday incorporating native American and European beliefs in a riot of spicey food, music, and skeletons figurines. In Hungary, however, All Saints and All Souls Day bring to mind the spirit of this holy day as the early church originally conceived of it: solemnity.                                                       

beautiful monuments adorn kerepesi, Budapest’s main cemetery.

Photos: Bori Benkő