National festivals were an important medium in the process of formation of the modern Slovak nation. In the 19th century, Slovak national activists, due to the infancy of their own national movement, and the fact that in the Hungarian Kingdom they represented a non-dominant ethnicity, could operate mainly in the cultural and social spheres. They had to look for forms of public action which could provide a substitute for political commitment. Before the revolution in 1848 and in the period of neo-absolutism in the 1850s, they could not form political associations, nor during the period of dualism (1867-1918). In accordance with the Nationality Act of 1868, non-Hungarian ethnic groups were not permitted to form groups other than cultural associations, and national activism was thus conducted in the fields of journalism, fiction and the celebration of anniversaries. Funerals of deceased patriots were an important form of mobilization, and the follow-on publication of descriptive reports fixed the events in people’s memories and created a special vocabulary with its own symbolism. The organizers and participants of “national celebrations” did not associate them with the quantity of those present, but their representativeness. The typology of national celebrations was created gradually, their form stabilized and the rhetoric enriched.

The national activists of the 1830s and ’40s were inspired by their experience of student gatherings at German universities and applied these to the conditions in Upper Hungary. The young men who associated themselves with Ľudovít Štúr (1815–1856) would organize trips and outings to places with a glorious past, which were conceived as national celebrations. Pilgrimages were undertaken to the ruins of the Devín castle above the confluence of the Danube and Morava rivers. This place is considered to be the seat of the 9th-century “Slovak” rulers of Great Moravia. The memorial hike to Devín on 24 April 1836 was associated with singing, recitation and speeches, and with a “national baptism” – the ritual adoption of Slavic names. The collective trips to the following sacred peaks were also known as national celebrations: Kriváň in the High Tatras, Zobor near Nitra (a Great Moravia memorial site), Sitno near Banská Štiavnica (according to legend, knights were asleep under it, and they would awake when the nation was in danger) and Javorina on the Slovak-Moravian border (where solidarity between the Slovaks and Czechs was demonstrated). At this stage, the national walks, festivals, balls or games were the pursuit of only a small group of enthusiasts; these activities ceased with the 1848 revolution.

In the 1860s, national activists could, compared with the previous and subsequent periods, briefly exercise a greater right to form associations. They organized reading circles (besedy), entertainments, trips, national festivals, choirs and amateur theatrical societies.  The culmination of the festive gatherings was the meeting in Martin where the Memorandum národa slovenského (1861) was adopted, and the Matica Slovenská festivities (from 1863), which were exceptional in their ceremony, symbolism, numbers present and accompanying events.  It was not possible to organize the grand celebrations planned for the thousandth anniversary of the arrival of the SS Cyril and Methodius in Great Moravia (1863); a single major national-church festival did take place under the aegis of Bishop Štefan Moyses in Selce near Banská Bystrica.

After the Austro-Hungarian Settlement (1867), the Hungarian government pursued a Magyarization policy. Following the dissolution of the Matica Slovenská and the three Slovak private grammar schools, festivities became the dominant expression of a besieged Slovak identity. The most significant were the annual August festivities in Martin, which, after the closure of the Matica, were held by the Živena Women’s Association, from the 1890s in cooperation with the Slovak Museum Society, featuring Slovak choir performances, amateur theatre performances with tableaux vivants, recitations and singing competitions, common prayer, lunches, tours and embroidery exhibitions. The evening ball showcased luxurious gowns and national costumes, attended by guests from other Slovak cities and regions, within the monarchy or (on occasion) from further afield (Russia). The August festivals lasted for more than fifty years and were one of the longest traditions in national life during the monarchy.

Whilst in the 1860s national activists emphasized mass participation at these festivities as a demonstration of national unity, younger activists in the 1890s (later centred around the journal Hlas and called “Hlasisti”) opted for more decentralized, small-scale events focused on the promotion of Czech-Slovak cooperation.

Funerals of important national personalities were considered to be national demonstrations, as were collections for the erection of gravestones, plaques on buildings associated with their activities, or the publication and reissuing of their literary work. The first national event of this type was the unveiling of the gravestone of the poet Ján Hollý and the planting of linden trees around his grave (Dobrá Voda, 1854). Spectacular events also surrounded the funerals of Ľudovít Štúr (Modra, 1856), Karol Kuzmány (Martin, 1866) and Viliam Pauliny-Tóth (Martin, 1877). The funeral of Jozef Miloslav Hurban (Hlboké, 1888) was also a mass national event. At the unveiling of his gravestone (1892), the gendarmes only admitted family members to the cemetery. This act gained notoriety as an example of repression of Slovaks by the Hungarian authorities. Indignation was expressed by Hurban’s son Svetozár Hurban Vajanský in a press article entitled “Hyenism in Hungary”, for which he was imprisoned. This exacerbated the public mood still further and played into the myth of victimhood as cultivated by national activists.

The centenary of the birth of Ján Kollár (1893) was a media event, following celebrations in Mošovce and Martin and the ban and dispersal of guests by the gendarmes. The festivities and, even more, their prohibition, boosted a media-driven national mobilization.