President Sulyok Wishes for a Nation at Peace with Itself in 2025

Breaking with tradition, President Tamás Sulyok timed his year-end speech for Christmas, instead of New Year’s Eve. In his Christmas speech on Thursday evening, he called the Hungarians’ commitment to peace exemplary and wished for a healthier, calmer nation in 2025.

The President began his speech by addressing Hungarians, in a slight change of tradition, “not in the gaiety of the beginning of the year, but in the intimate joy of Christmas.” He described Christmas as the time of year when people who might not otherwise be so receptive to fellowship during the rest of the year seek communion with others.

The Head of State pointed out that it is not only family, kinship or friendship that binds people together. Every nation is also a “community-based unit,” he stressed.

Hungarians are connected to each other by being part of one or more communities, in which “we accompany each other from birth to death,”

he noted. These are the basic units that make up a nation, from which, for a millennium, ideas that build, forward-looking plans, decisive actions and good responses to the challenges of the times have been born, he said.

The President also mentioned that “we have been facing security threats for years due to war conflicts.” He stressed that we can only stand up for peace together, in unity, for all of us, including the Hungarian communities in Transcarpathia, who are experiencing their third Christmas without peace.

If we are proclaiming external peace, we must also take into account the internal peace of our nation, and we must not allow ourselves to be divided or played off against each other for whatever reasons.”

Tamás Sulyok stressed that “we should never see each other, other Hungarians, as enemies, and that a healthier nation more at peace could be the goal by 2025.”

The Head of State also said that the success of a nation is not only measured in economic or political terms, but also in the strength of its communities, the extent to which its members are able to stick together and help each other. He said that the “most powerful weapon” for our national survival is to stay in community. To do this, he added, we need to protect the communities we have already built, and create new ones where they have not or have withered away.

Tamás Sulyok stressed that

if our communities are successful, the nation will be successful. Our cohesion presupposes an active national community, not living side by side, but living together, and this must prevail despite all the differences between us.”

The President emphasized that in the challenges facing Hungary and the trials of our nation, we need to relearn the practice of belonging to each other, and this is not a matter of generational, political, economic, opinion or value differences. “Regardless of all differences, let us include each other in our lives,” the President wished, concluding his speech by saying God bless Hungary, Hungarian communities and all Hungarians.

President Tamás Sulyok: Christianity is Hungary’s Moral Foundation