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Politico: How the far right 'stole' Christmas

2025-12-26 18:16:08Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Politico: How the far right 'stole' Christmas
Giorgia Meloni

Christmas is becoming a new front line in Europe's culture wars.

The public discourse of the European far right shifts during the holidays from its classic areas – immigration, security, “law and order” – to a new, more emotional front: Christmas!

Parties and leaderships try to "appropriate" the holiday, presenting it as a sign of Christian identity and cultural continuity in Europe, against a hostile, secular or intelligent space that - according to their narrative - seeks to weaken it.

As Politico reports , the pattern is directly similar to the American narrative of a “war on Christmas,” which has circulated in right-wing media for years, with Donald Trump occasionally claiming to have “brought back” “Merry Christmas,” as an act of resistance to political correctness. In Europe, the same line “translates” into a broader cultural showdown, where Christmas becomes the latest arena in a conflict over symbols, language, and public space.

In Italy, Giorgia Meloni has made defending Christmas customs a core part of her identity politics. In her interventions, she has presented the celebration as part of the country's "endangered" heritage and denounced "ideological" efforts to change it. She has defended the public presence of the nativity scene, questioning her previous statements "How can my culture offend you?", while stressing that children should learn the values ​​of the Nativity and not associate the celebration only with food and gifts.

A similar dynamic is being recorded in France and Spain, where the National Front and Vox are opposing secular or "neutral" options in the public sphere and are defending the retention of religious symbols in municipalities and public spaces.

In Germany, the AfD warns that Christmas markets are “losing their German character,” reinforcing claims that Muslim customs are replacing Christian ones, in an attempt to present the holiday as a field of “defense” against a cultural threat.

However, in Meloni's case, the message is not limited to statements. Her party, Fratelli di Italia, has turned the issue into a Christmas political spectacle. Every December, it organizes a political festival with a Christmas aesthetic, with Santa Claus, an ice rink and a large tree lit up in the colors of the Italian flag.

The event, which used to be held more quietly towards the end of summer, has moved to an emblematic location in Castel Sant'Angelo, attracting families, tourists and curious visitors. The image is typical: people enter for the lights and music and then realize they are at a political event, a meeting where politics is "softened" in a festive atmosphere.

For party officials, the symbolism is presented as self-evident. The meaning is that traditions are “roots” and therefore should be “celebrated and protected.”

However, as analysts point out, religion often functions more as a cultural code than as a belief. Even if many of the politicians who “raise” the campaign are not particularly religious and even if a portion of their voters do not actively go to church, Christianity is used as a cultural indicator, as a symbolic division of “us” versus “them”. In this sense, the concept of “cultural Christianity” becomes a tool of identity and political tension, especially after periods when a sense of “clash of civilizations” prevailed in Europe due to terrorist attacks.

In the same context, the far right tries to exploit the difficulty that progressive circles often have in talking about religion in public life. The use of neutral expressions such as “happy holidays” is presented by far right parties as a sign of “cultural self-subjugation.”

In Italy, for example, there have been attacks by the Lega and Fratelli di Italia on schools that removed religious references from Christmas carols, while in Genoa, right-wing groups accused the mayor of “exploding tradition” for not placing a nativity scene in her office.

Within this narrative, the phrase "We are not ashamed to say 'Merry Christmas'" appears as a political statement, with the far right adding that it recognizes religious freedom, but considers that Christmas is a holiday that is "taken more care of" and therefore its "roots" should not be forgotten.

Critics counter that many of the traditions of Christmas are relatively recent and shaped as much by religion as by commerce. Yet Christmas remains politically potent precisely because it is charged with family rituals, childhood memories, and local identity. And in this context, the holiday’s “claim” functions as a vehicle for something broader: an attempt to control the cultural field.


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