Despite the troubling times seen around the world at present, 14 EU member states are still observing the Christian tradition of Good Friday and Easter.
The Hungarian government declared in March 2017 that Good Friday will become a national holiday, and today marks the fourth Good Friday observed as a holiday.
The government made Good Friday a public holiday to reinforce Christian roots and the deeper meaning of the holiday is that “there is no success without sacrifice and no resurrection without death, and that there can be no Easter without Good Friday."
The holiday was made public after Parliament voted on the issue in a session in March 2017 - 163 votes were cast in favor with two abstentions, accepting the government’s proposal to make the day a national holiday.