Bull-hitting

 The winter carnival period is a festive season of 40 day period of fasting in preparation of Easter. The carnival burial before Lent is a tradition specific in Hungarian communities in Transylvania. This costume, referred to as farsang, symbolize, with a lot of joy and masked processions, the “funeral” of the winter.

The inhabitants of the Hungarian villages in the Casin region bury the winter with a carnival called the “Bull-hitting”.  A young villager is disguised as a bull, and walked throughout the village, carrying a clay pot with horns on his head. The owner is trying to sell the animal, and is negotiating its price with the villagers. At the end, desperate that the offered price is too low, the owner decides to kill the animal. With his ax he hits and breaks the clay pot. The straw bull is burned, representing the victory of spring over winter, while the bull’s death represents the symbolic death of the cold season.

The carnival ends with a celebration, the last opportunity before the Lent.

The Kazun Association initiated a project, the Traditions in Casin, under which the carnival burial was registered as a short documentary film.