Titles and titles don't matter at Christmas, Béla Horváth is "just" father and grandfather on the holy holiday. But I think this position is the highest position where the Creator can place a man.
Béla Horváth can be named in many ways. We can say that he is a transport engineer, construction engineer, engineer-economist, or a politician, that is the parliamentary representative of the MDF and then the FKGP. We can be titled a member of the public body of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, or even the leader of the Kölcsey Circle of the National Forum Association. We can talk about him in the way that he fought for the commemoration of the Victims of Communism, or he is the co-founder of the Faith Shield Award (the other founder was the writer Tibor Gyurkovics), we can also name him online as a member of the representative body of the Szent Anna Parish in Felsővízíváros, Budapest.
However, titles and titles do not matter at Christmas, Béla Horváth is "only" father and grandfather on the holy holiday. But I think this position is the highest position where the Creator can place a man.
Photo: Tamás Sóki / Index
– I got married in 1982, now I have 5 grandchildren, 4 of them live in Hungary, we welcome them at Christmas. But on the 24th, everyone will have their own Christmas, we will organize the big family gathering on the 25th. Of course, we set up the Christmas tree on the 23rd so that everything is ready the next day, when they come up to us during the day and give each other presents. I have three sons, two of my four grandchildren at home are girls and two are boys, but we rarely see the fifth. His mother is Chinese, they celebrate Christmas there and only technology helps us to see them through a mobile video call. My youngest grandson is baptized even though his Chinese family is not Christian. On the other hand, when we baptized Nimród in the Batthyány square Szent Anna church, they also came and took part in the ceremony.
- Our Christmas menu is a little different from the traditional one, because fish is not so popular in the family, instead we have duck legs and duck breast, everyone likes roast duck, my wife is a wonderful cook. I'm not so much, so I leave the cooking to someone who knows how to do it. My job is to help with shopping and preparation. Of course, when I was a child, fish soup was a mandatory element of the Christmas menu, then the cooked fish meat had to be passed through a sieve, which made it very thick and tasty, and this job fell to me at the time. Fortunately, I don't have to do that now. But we can't miss the bagel, which was made at home in the old days, when I was a child. It was not easy to roll out that huge dough, fill it with filling, roll it up and put it in the oven. Now we buy ready-made bagels, since there are so many varieties available in the best private pastry shops. I don't even remember if it was even possible to get bagels ready-made in the Kádár system.
– The Christmas tree must be up to the ceiling, so that the top decoration still fits between the ceiling and the top of the tree, this is a tradition. And also that the holiday revolves around the grandchildren. The oldest is eight, then six down, three and a half, and two. There is a lot of excitement until someone shakes the little bell, but not only the children are excited. At this time, everyone relives their childhood a little and suddenly everyone becomes very Catholic when we sing the angel from Heaven and the Shepherds, shepherds. The grandchildren already understand the text, one of them sings along with us, and even if we don't say it, we feel that Christmas speaks to our hearts.
Author: György Tóth Jr
Front page photo: Christmas decorations at the Christmas fair on the Marosvásárhely Theater square on December 7, 2024.
MTI/Gábor Kiss
