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 | Speeches | | |
President of the Republic at the Christmas Fire of the Estonian Union of Pensioners on December 8, 2001, at the Tallinn City Hall08.12.2001
My dear compatriots,
I am really glad to meet all of you here in December - the month we call Christmas Month. Admittedly this is the darkest period of the year at our latitude but our hearts are filled with Christmas expectations and hopes for a new triumph of light.
Despite the newfangled customs, the meaning of Christmas for us does not consist in how expensive our presents are or, how generously our Christmas tables are set but, above all, how open we will be to each other. Human being springs from another human being, both in the biological and in the social sense. Language and culture are products of long-term collective activities. Without the others we would not be who we are and who we consider ourselves to be. Therefore, the most important Christmas present for us ever is the proximity of another human being, which is stressed in the Christian Christmas message too.
Since days of yore, Christmas has been for the Estonians a holiday of light. Our ancestors had experienced and we know it too that after the winter solstice darkness stops advancing and at last the days will get longer again. This longing for light caused by the darkness depressing our minds is so strong that every Christmas we experience it over and over again - from year to year, century after century.
For us, dear friends those feelings of empathy with and respect for neighbors are a matter of course. Otherwise we would not have been able neither to restore the independence of our country nor to create preconditions for future prospects. Like the most part of your lives, the last years have not been easy. The oldest of you can remember both the pre-war Republic of Estonia and the occupations following the war. We had to fight at different fronts of the World War we had not launched but the heaviest burden of loss of which we had to carry together with other small nations. Many of you were deported to Siberia just for your parents and you yourselves were honest Estonians. However, in spite of those bitter humiliations you returned to your native country to improve the life in Estonia devastated and later on, to build a new life here.
A great many of us had to preserve and to defend against imperialist attacks of a great power what had survived the atrocities of World War II in Estonia. We came out of that struggle as winners first of all because we wanted to and we could keep together, because we had shared values for which we were willing to give up quite a lot.
The present-day Estonia is not yet what we were dreaming of ten years ago. However, there is still a basis for our dreams - an independent Estonian state with its steadily developing economy, our continuously strengthening Defence Forces and the Kaitseliit, arisen from the popular will. We have, in addition to our capital growing ever more beautiful, our county centers which have found their places and which are making progress step by step. We have Tartu with its Alma mater and other establishments of higher education all having their firm places both in the Estonian and the international scientific and cultural life.
But we also have an Estonia that is socially parted, one part considering itself superior and the other experiencing exclusion.
We have people in the countryside left behind with their problems and villages battling with misery. Without any reason, many merited people have been deprived of the deserved attention classifying them as belonging to the past, although we could see our independence restored only owing to their efforts.
Dear friends! Estonia is on its way. Of course, we would like this way to be more delightful but the future of our country depends both on wisdom and experience of you and on the enterprising spirit of the youth. To reach our goals, we should be capable of keeping to this sense of Christmas coherence in everyday life as well. I am convinced that you are capable of it and I hope you to share your strenght with the youth.
I wish you Merry Christmas, may your hearts be filled with hopes!
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