name day celebration

in hungary we celebrate name days, as you may recall. under communism there was a government approved list of names hungarians could name their children, so i think to make it seem like that wasn't as sucky as it actually was, hungarians (and other countries) celebrated the names by assigning one (or sometimes up to 5) name a day of the year. it's a bigger deal than birthdays since name days are public - even printed on calendars - while birthdays are usually just a family affair.

anyway, at school we celebrated all the name days from september and october with one common party. the staff members who had their name days during those months brought in goodies and drinks for the other teachers.

before we ate the food, we (and by 'we' i mean 'they') sang a little song which was new to me. apparently it's a catholic thing... well, that's my guess.

the guy who started the song is a priest. he began by listing the names of the honorees, then led us into the song.


then cheek kissing ensued, which i expected...


and then we dug in! there were pastries and fruit and homemade dishes and candy and cakes galore, not to mention tea, soda, sparkling water, fruit juices, and coffee.

gotta love teacher parties in the staff room :)