Tue Feb 14, 2023 – 9:26 pm EST
NEW YORK (LifeSiteNews) — Tens of thousands of Danes flooded the streets of Copenhagen last week to protest the potential removal of Denmark’s more than 300-year-old Great Prayer Day, which has been celebrated on the fourth Friday after Easter since 1686.
The nation’s leaders are considering eliminating the holiday, called “Bevar Store Bededag” in Danish, in a bid to shore up more finances to fund the war in Ukraine, Reuters reported.
Citizens have voiced strong disapproval of the idea, packing the streets on Sunday, February 5 in what might be the biggest public protest the lightly populated Scandinavian country has seen in a decade.
Labor unions organizing the protest estimated that the event drew 50,000 attendees.
The public protest came after the country’s biggest trade union last month launched a petition to keep the holiday. The petition wound up tallying over 400,000 signatures.
According to Reuters, the proposal to toss out the three-centuries-old holiday first surfaced in December as the “newly formed government” headed by 44-year-old Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen sought ways to “raise tax revenues for higher defence spending in [the] wake of the Ukraine war.”
“Our government,
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