[Journalists] Christmas in Hungary a blessing in disguise |The Columbus Dispatch

[Elizabeth Sammons]

Hi, Elizabeth,

In response to your request, please find below the article run in Columbus
Dispatch last Saturday -- well, almost. I am actually sending here the
original I sent them before a couple of unwelcome edits... since when is
"unrhythmic" for example, a word that they changed from arrhythmic???

Happy reading,
Elizabeth Sammons, Hilliard, Ohio

***

Hungarian Christmas remembered
By Elizabeth L. Sammons


As the village train rattled from Sárvár to Szombathely, western Hungary on
Christmas day, 1991, I tried to override the sorrow and loneliness I felt by
ticking off the reasons this Christmas was going to be a good one. True, my
mother at home in Ohio had died unexpectedly that summer during my first
week of Peace Corps service, rocking my world –true, the food, traditions
and people of this country felt strange, sometimes even alienating. But
equally true, last night’s worship with fellow villagers had overridden the
many barriers of language and tradition as together, we rejoiced in the
birth of Jesus Christ. In a few minutes now , I would be sharing some
American customs and fun with fellow volunteers.

But when I stepped off the train, where was my fellow English teacher Julie?
Fortunately I remembered her block of concrete apartments a few unpeopled
streets away. 

My stomach still sinks as I remember two, then three rings of Julie’s
doorbell,  shrill and empty. As a neighbor’s radio echoed the arrhythmic
notes of a Hungarian folk song into the bare corridor, my earlier loneliness
caught up and nearly overwhelmed me. The Biblical “Because there was no room
for them in the inn” came alive as my icy steps echoed off gates  -- closed
gates of the more prosperous homes on my way back to the railroad station.  

Fumbling with my wallet to find the train fare back to Sárvár, I felt a
scrap of paper, worried as a ball of lint. With that, my mind raced back to
a meeting weeks before with Mária and Jozsef, astronomers who lived
somewhere in this city. “Call us any time you’re in  Szombathely,” I
remembered Jozsef saying as we said good-bye  and he wrote down their home
number that I stuck in my wallet and never put away. “Well,” I said to
myself now, “Here it is. The worst thing that can happen is that they aren’t
home, or that they’ll just say no, and then you would be in no worse shape
than you are now, right?”

Mária picked up on the first ring; within an hour, Jozsef had driven to the
station to meet me. When we arrived, Jozsef said cheerfully, “Just go on in.
I don’t want you to get cold. I’ll park the car in our garage. It’s about a
kilometer from here,” (ten minutes walk)

We must have eaten traditional Hungarian Christmas dishes like wall nut or
poppy seed roles.   I don’t remember. Etched in my heart instead is the
warmth of the welcome I received there as stranger in a strange land, the
human kindness that transformed a plight of loneliness into the wonder of
togetherness. 

Mária and Jozsef insisted that I stay the night. In my faltering Hungarian,
I tried to find words the next morning to express my thanks as they drove me
back to the railroad station. “You are truly a holy family like Mary and
Joseph sharing your Christmas with me,” I managed.

Mária laughed. “We’re atheists, of course,” she replied. “We’re just
people.” Later I learned that a last-minute change of plans and no telephone
in my apartment had prevented Julie from letting me know that she would not
be in Szombathely but inviting me to join her and other Peace Corps
volunteers in Budapest. Even though that Christmas of 1991 was hard, I am
glad that it happened as it did. Writing this, I wish  any Hungarian readers
an especially Kellemes karácsonyt  – a Merry Christmas this year and always.