The Hungarian government declared in March that Good Friday will become a national holiday, and tomorrow will be the first Good Friday that Hungary will observe as a national holiday.
“Declaring Good Friday a public holiday raises awareness of the fact that it is worth thinking about the deeper meaning of this day," Zoltán Balog, the minister of Human Capacities, told Reformátusok Lapja.
Balog said that making Good Friday a public holiday reinforces 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 - 163 votes were cast in favor with two abstentions, accepting the government’s proposal to make the day a national holiday.
This year's Easter holidays in Hungary will now become a 4 day weekend, from April 14 to 17, and will put Hungary in the company of 14 EU countries that observe Good Friday as a national holiday.