March 15th is "Universal Celebration Of Hungary's Freedom"
- 15 Mar 2023 7:56 AM
- Hungary Matters
March 15 “is once and for all the universal celebration of Hungarian freedom”, Gergely Gulyás, the head of the Prime Minister’s Office, said at a ceremony handing over state awards on the occasion of Hungary’s national holiday.
Gulyás said at the event held in the Várkert Bazaar that March 15 rightly filled all Hungarians with pride. It is the commemoration of Hungarians able to shape the nation and demonstrate “their instinctive wish for freedom and national unity”, he added.
The revolution 175 years ago marked the birth of civic Hungary, he said. In March 1848, the people’s revolution was victorious in Budapest, as bourgeois Hungary supplanted “creaking feudalism”, he said, adding it was at this time that the Hungarian nation and a civic Hungary were born.
Also, March 15 marks the day when decades of reform era that flourished in the Hungarian national consciousness was fulfilled.
The fight for freedom gave Hungarians a capacity for hope, and the knowledge that freedom “is not given free of charge, but we have always had to fight for it,” he said.
Orbán Greets Hungarians Across Border Ahead of National Holiday
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán greeted Hungarians across the borders in a letter ahead of the March 15 national holiday.
The letter, in accordance with a tradition of several years, will be read out at several local events. March 15, 1848, has a special place in world history, Orbán said in the letter.
“Even from a distance of 175 years, we remember with awe of the day of pure light when the Hungarian nation won its freedom without bloodshed, in peace and cooperation,” it said.
While Hungarians have shown many times that they are ready to fight when they are outnumbered, “we — much like other nations — prefer living in freedom to dying for it,” Orbán said.
In the present “terrible” times, “we need the compass of Hungarian freedom more than ever,” he said.”We yearn for peace, we stand on the side of peace.”
While Hungary respects other nations, it expects the same from “Brussels, Washington and Kyiv”, he said.
“We see it as our moral duty to do all we can to silence the weapons, because this is the only way to guarantee the safety and livelihood of people in the Carpathian Basin,” he said.
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