The entire Hungarian nation celebrated the Day of Hungarian Culture on Monday, both within and beyond our borders.
‘Preserving our Hungarian identity, culture vitally important’
“Preserving our Hungarian identity and our culture is not a minor detail, but something that is vitally important, because only a community that is proud of its nation and culture can survive,” the state secretary for Hungarian communities abroad said in Dunajska Streda (Dunaszerdahely), in southern Slovakia, marking the Day of Hungarian Culture on Monday.
“The easiest way we can preserve our culture … is by making it a part of our everyday lives by enrolling our children in Hungarian schools … and observing our customs,” Árpád János Potápi said at the event.
“This is all the more important today because we are seeing a worrisome process in Europe,” he said.
“They want to settle foreign people [here], they’re tearing down millennium-old treasures and churches and they reject Christianity, the set of values that is a part of our Europeanness.”
If Hungarian cultural life stays strong, then the Hungarian community will be able “to accomplish big things in other areas, too,” the state secretary said.
“Respecting and passing on our culture from generation to generation is about respecting our ancestors and ourselves.”
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Csák: Day of Hungarian Culture ‘celebration for us all’
The Day of Hungarian Culture “is a celebration for us all”, János Csák, the culture and innovation minister, said at a ceremony held in the basilica of the Pannonhalma Archabbey on Monday.
He said Hungarian culture was bound together by “our respect and love for God, family, homeland, and our commitment to the cause of Hungarian freedom.”
Csák noted that the Day of Hungarian Culture coincided with the consecration of the basilica 800 years ago. Culture, he said, was not only about works of art but it was a way of thinking and “our way of life”.
The minister said that culture was built across generations.
“We have a mother tongue, one that is built on music and dance, and is visual,” he said.