Socialist Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy said Easter was "the greatest Christian holiday," for his post Communist country of 10 million people.
Medgyessy, an ex-Communist who admitted to have worked for the former secret service, suggested Easter was now part of the tradition of "European Hungarians", at a time when the ex-Soviet satellite state prepares to join the European Union in 2004.
Last week 84 percent of participating Hungarians voted for EU membership in a referendum that enabled the premier to sign the historic accession treaty in Athens, something unthinkable under Communism that only collapsed over a decade ago.
"The resurrection of the crucified Christ gives believers the power of rebirth, dedication and faith — the real basis of the Christian belief," Medgyessy said in a statement to the Hungarian news agency MTI.
He stressed that members of the Jewish community were also preparing to celebrate Passover or Pesach, the holiday commemorating the liberation of Jews from Egyptian captivity.
The prime minister recalled a recent lecture given jointly by Catholic Primate Peter Erdo and retired Chief Rabbi Jozsef Schweitzer on Pesach and Easter, which they both hailed as a holiday of freedom.
"Our holidays have the same roots and we should be proud of our traditions inherited from our ancestors and work to pass them on to the future generation of European Hungarians," Medgyessy said.
It was an apparent reference to an ongoing dialogue between churches and Jewish people, nearly 6 decades after the Holocaust in which an estimated 600,000 Hungarian Jews died.
