Hungary celebrates national holiday

Hungarians turned out en masse despite sudden chilly weather to mark their national holiday on Thursday, Aug. 20, the day commemorating Saint Stephen, the founding king of Hungary.

The series of events culminated in a half-hour of fireworks along the Danube in Budapest which drew a huge crowd, who gathered along the riverbanks.

Earlier programs included fairs of handicrafts at Buda fortress and at the Hortobagy National Park in Eastern Hungary, a Budapest food fair offering tastes of traditional Hungarian cuisine.

Saint Stephen is also commemorated by the Catholic Church, which held a procession through the streets of Budapest in the afternoon.

Officers in the armed forces took their oath of office in front of parliament in the morning, where President Janos Ader injected a serious note, saying that Europe was once again being threatened by cold war and by a wave of migration that was putting Saint Stephen's nation at risk.

Despite membership in NATO and the European Union, he said, the threat was real. The European Union is facing challenges unprecedented in the 20th century. "Who would have believed that a terrorist rogue-state would be menacing half the world?" he asked.

Ader called for an end to indifference, to the mentality of "not my job," since it is everyone's job to resist the forces threatening the cohesion of local communities, "to protect our environment, our waters, our forests, our lands, and the air we breathe." Endit