When vaccination against Covid- still walked slowly around the world, the “cancellation” of Christmas in December 2017 was widely reverberated and talked about both in countries where the feast of Christ’s birth is celebrated amidst real snowflakes and where the mood at the end of the year refers to the Festival of the Undefeated Sol, the pagan festival that originally marked the summer solstice.
It seems obvious, after all, that, at least for about 31, 4% of the planet – estimated percentage of Christians according to data from the Pew Research Center of 2016 – the holiday December 31 is more than the most profitable holiday of the year: its roots are in the West. Echoing the British historian TomHolland, according to which all Western civilization “swims in Christian waters” – from its basic legal body to the notion of human rights -, it can be said that the opposite is also true: the roots of the West are rooted in the Christmas.
Ignoring this reality requires closing your eyes to the gigantic Christmas trees erected in the main European capitals each year, while theaters and squares display plays, cantatas and all sorts of decorations dedicated to the date. No wonder, therefore, that the internal document of the European Commission – an independent institution that implements European Union resolutions – leaked at the end of October caused so much furor. The guide recommended that employees avoid “assuming everyone is a Christian” and, in messages and internal communications, replace the greeting “Merry Christmas” with “Happy Holidays”, in addition to avoiding names associated with Christianity such as “Mary” and “John”.
The reaction was energetic and immediate to the point that, on December 1st, the EC Commissioner for Equality, HelenaDalli, announced the suspension of the directive, stating that the published version “did not it is a mature document and does not meet all the quality requirements of the Commission”. “The recommendations clearly need to be worked on further. Therefore, I withdraw the recommendations and I will work more on this document”, concluded the Commissioner of Equality, in a brief statement. No one less than Pope Francis had reacted to the text, classifying it as an “anachronism”, the result of a “liquefied secularism”. In yet another of his criticisms of modern ideologies that went unnoticed by the press, the Pontiff went further: he referred the initiative to the dictatorships of Nazism and Communism.
The “cancellations” of Christmas
It is not the first time in history that Christmas bothers to the point of being the target of attempts to “cancel”; what few people imagine is that the pioneers of this movement were the Christians themselves. When the Protestant Reformation lands in 17th-century England, the Christmas festivities are banned by Puritans, uncomfortable with the pagan roots of the tradition.
“The concern with this [a forma correta de celebrar o Natal] is itself , a very Christian tradition. But when you get to Reformed England, the Puritans in particular are very, very anxious about the way they see the Roman Church as having failed to pluck out the thorns of paganism. There is a tradition of generosity at Christmas that no doubt arises from the way Christians understand their duty to the poor. But, at that time, the meaning has already been mixed and these groups worry that these celebrations do not happen for Christian reasons, but for pagan reasons”, explainsHolland.
Despite all efforts , Christmas continued inside the houses: in February 1656, the Puritan ministerEzekielWoodward admitted, with bitterness, that “the people remain attached to their heathen customs and abominable idolatries”. It was only when King Charles II ascended the throne in 1656 that the feast of Christ’s birth – with its trees, garlands and goblins in the package – returned to the public sphere, granting the monarch the nickname “the King of Christmas”. Across the ocean, celebrating Christmas “whether by abstaining from work, partying or otherwise” under the law of the Puritan-settled US state of Massachussetts could earn a fine of 5 shillings. The party would only become a holiday on 1656.
The next “cancellation” attempt at Christmas would begin, finally, to resemble contemporary efforts: the period of terror that followed the French Revolution would bring an open war to religious festivities in the common space, which should be replaced by the cult of reason. A few decades later, it would be the Nazis who would make the effort to get rid of Christmas because of its obvious Christian and Jewish origins. This time, however, the movement was more subtle: instead of banning the party, Hitlerite propaganda tried to rewrite European history, emphasizing and idealizing pagan Germanic cultures and excluding the Christian heritage. Women baked swastika-shaped biscuits, the Star of Bethlehem became the “wheel of the sun of Odin” and Santa Claus took on the features of the Germanic godWotan.
At the same time, in the On the neighboring continent, Christmas was purged from the newly-born Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). As a party intended to celebrate family union, tradition and religion – Karl Marx’s “opium of the people” – the birth of Christ was a huge thorn in the side of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and its militant atheism. In order not to completely lose the support of the population, however, it was necessary to act strategically. When the Soviets took over Hungary in 1948, they chose the day after Christmas to arrest the local archbishop, and the following year they replaced the date with a celebration. of the figure of Josef Stalin. In Russia, like Germany, Stalin himself encouraged the commemoration of a Christmas detached from Christianity, with figures from local mythology, even after denouncing them as “allies of the Church”.
From prohibition to erasure
Christmas survived Nazism, Communism, the end of the USSR and arrived safe and sound in the 21st century, albeit with the same potential to cause uncomfortable. The politically correct document of the European Union can be seen as the tip of the iceberg of a controversy that originated in the United States and that has taken on international proportions.
Since the beginning of the years 2000, the use of the expression “Happy Holidays” versus the good old “Merry Christmas” is at the heart of the heated discussions that, in the US, have already reached the stage. In 1948, Fox News presenter BillO’Rileypublished the book “The War at Christmas: How the Progressive Conspiracy to Ban the Christian Holy Holiday Is Worse Than You thought”. The work is mainly about cases of schools that, in the name of “plurality”, would be avoiding Christian symbols during the Christmas period. Although containing untrue, exaggerated or selective information – some schools were falsely accused of banning green and red, for example, while republican governors who opted for “Happy Holidays” were unharmed – the stories reverberated on the channel.
That year, Wal-Mart supermarket chain “encouraged” its employees to use “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”, while the White House occupied by George W. Bush also opted for the greeting generic on your year-end card. It would be, however, President Barack Obama who, in 2016, would draw attention for wishing”Happy Holidays” via Twitter, at the time when brands like Barnes & Noble, BestBuy Victoria’s Secret and Starbucks avoided mention of the religious party in their December catalogues, preferring references to winter or “social harmony.” All of this served as a weapon for then presidential candidate Donald Trump to assert, at a rally in Wisconsin, that he would bring “Merry Christmas” back.
So, year after year, the the uproar of progressive groups with Christmas gains a new chapter. Also in 2016, the American CivilLibertiesUnion (ACLU) in Indiana filed a lawsuit on behalf of a resident of the city of Knightstown who objected to a cross displayed at the top of the Official Christmas tree of the municipality. The cross has been removed. “As long as the government itself does not promote religious doctrine, these celebrations are entirely constitutional,” said the group’s representative.
The ACLU’s argument is, in fact, extremely revealing – and essential for that the movement of the European Union is understood. “At the heart of this problem is the vision of secularist liberalism that has become the dominant mentality of Western democracies. With the disintegration of medieval Christianity and the rise of the modern national state as the manager of violence, there is the promise of security in exchange for the loss of some There is, then, a weakening of personal identities in the public sphere, and religion is relegated to the private space. it ended the religious wars and had positive effects in terms of avoiding absolutism, but secularism also has its excesses”, explains historian AlexCatharino, researcher at the Russell Kirk Center.
“One of these problems is the idea that public action, whose purpose is justice, must promote equalization at any cost. In practice, you create a flattening, destroy the diversity of local cultures and the very identity of the society by promoting an impossible neutrality”, he explains. “What these bureaucrats don’t understand is that the State is secular, but it’s made up of religious people – and it’s not as if in the public sphere they’re going to strip away everything. The fear of hurting the different by the mere mention of Christmas is dangerous because we have fallen into the temptation of totalitarian regimes to try to rewrite history”, explains Catharino.
The historian’s reflection echoes Pope Francis’ response to the European proposal: “The European Union must take the ideals of the Founding Fathers, who were ideals of unity, of greatness, and being careful not to give way to ideological colonization. This could lead to division of countries and failure. The European Union must respect each country as it is structured within, ( …) and not wanting to standardize. (…) That’s why the Christmas document is an anachronism”.
Why does Christmas bother so much?
Apart from the amorphous “multiculturalism” expressed in the European Commission document, the universe “woke ” has its own crusade against Christmas: a quick search reveals dozens of articles about “problematic” Christmas movies that should be “avoided” by deconstructed young people. Among them, the classic “Happiness Is Not Buy” (1946), by Frank Capra, whose protagonist George Bailey would be an “abusive and manipulative” man – a list of complaints that seem to come not from young Twitter users, but from the curmudgeonly EbenezerScrooge incarnation of Charles Dickens’ classic “A Christmas Carol” (“Merry Christmas to hell!” says the old man) .
“The problem with Christmas, as GKChesterton would say, is that it is a sign of contradiction for those who think about technology, wealth and consumption. It is the party where society is confronted with a fragile boy who was God. ‘Merry Christmas’ is a reminder that the world is not an inexorable march towards progress, and it is time to turn to our littleness. That’s when conservatives and liberals simplify in thinking that it’s just a problem of the State: the problem is the culture”, reinforces Catharino.
In fact, perhaps few thinkers have exposed so clearly the discomfort inherent in the party that, more than any other, calls for a return to the familiar. “The Christmas period is domestic; and for this reason most people prepare for it by squeezing on buses, waiting in lines, running on subways, huddled together in teahouses, and wondering when or if they’re going to get home. someday.”
“Just before the great festival of the home, the entire population seems to have become homeless. excess, there is a desperate homelessness. (…) I have in mind the opposite of irreverence when I say that the only point of similarity between them s and the archetypal Christmas family is that there is no room for them in the inn. Now Christmas is made up of a beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home,” Chesterton wrote, laying bare the reason why it is not surprising that a generation fond of individuality and the external has lost its appreciation for the celebration.
Behind the Iron Curtain that Chesterton saw being erected in the east, Christmas was known to be uncomfortable because of its intimate relationship with religion and tradition. There is, at the bottom of this contempt, an element common to bureaucrats and “cancellers” on duty, also identified and described by the essayist: the aversion to the existence of a personal, intimate and unreachable space, capable of surviving the most nefarious or tasteless ideologies: “may there be a night that things shine from within: and a day that men search for everything that is buried within themselves, and discover – in the place where it is really hidden, behind locked gates and closed windows, behind of doors three times locked and bolted – the spirit of freedom”.
2017
