The celebrations around Christmas in the Catholic Church began on the first Sunday of Advent and end on January 6th. This is the day of Epiphany, the beginning of the carnival season. In Rye Island, there was a tradition of the Walk of the Three Kings. This custom was known throughout the geographical area inhabited by Hungarians. Béla Marczell describes the event as follows: “In those times, three larger boys put on long white shirts and were wearing a paper-made royal crown or bishop's headgear (mitre/infula) on their heads. One of the kings had a white face, he was Menyhárt (Melichior), the European - white - man. The other, Gáspár (Caspar), painted his face brown, thus symbolizing the Semitic-Arab peoples, that is, the inhabitants of the continent of Asia. And Boldizsár (Balthasar), represented black Africa in the play. ” One of the three kings held a stick in his hand, leaning against it, it was carrying a six-pointed star. This was designed in a way that it could carry a candle in the middle which could be lit. The other king had a rattling stick to beat the floor. The noise - in this case as well - was used to ward off evil. They were walking from house to house and asked for admission. When they were allowed in, they sang.
In the villages along the Danube in Rye Island, where a mill used to operate, this was also the day of millers. They went to church, confessed, sacrificed. A festive parade was organized in the afternoon. In the procession, girls carried around a disc resembling a mill wheel a priori decorated with coloured ribbons. The wheel was fastened to a slat and often rotated. The disc was then carried to the pub where it was hung on the principal beam. Then they were having fun until the next morning. “At midnight, a military dance called ‘The Danger of the Millers’ was danced. They played how to save the mill during a flood, while imitating dancing movements with their feet. The dance also had corresponding lyrics: ‘Tighten it, the water should not take it away! Get it out, towards the shore! Carefull, so it does not hit the shore, because he may sink! Oh, careful do not let it towards the shore! Well, we are finally in the right place!’ The last mill of the village of Medve was towed into the haven around 1944. It was then that the ‘Danger of the Millers’ was last played out in its entirety” Béla Marczell describes the Rye Island practice.
