IT’S THE DEMOGRAPHY, STUPID: Europe Is Canceling Christmas.
The gradual cancellation of Christmas in countries such as France, Spain, the United Kingdom or Germany is perhaps the most worrying symptom of the West’s renunciation of its Judeo-Christian cultural identity. It is happening at all levels: from governments and city councils to schools and associations. As ever, it’s the secularists of the socialist left, behind the facade of “inclusivity,” who are the most determined to cancel Christmas, which for centuries has been celebrated in style throughout the continent. Indeed, it has been celebrated as a festivity of the union, not segregation, between different peoples. What Ronald Reagan explained simply and in his own unique way, that “Christmas is a holiday that we celebrate not as individuals nor as a nation, but as a human family,” now appears entirely incomprehensible.
Let’s look at some examples of what is happening in Europe. In November, the head teacher of Wherwell Primary School, in Andover, England, informed parents that there would be no reference to Christmas in the school’s traditional festive pantomime, in order to be “inclusive.” Since “Christmas songs were included in the performance,” and some parents usually prevent their children from attending on religious grounds, the head teacher wrote, “We have requested that the show contain no reference to Christmas.” According to the 2021 census, 62.4% of Andover’s then-50,887 residents identified as Christian, compared with 0.6% who are Muslim.
The trend of canceling Christmas in European schools didn’t start this year, it simply spreads from one December to the next like an oil slick at sea. The first major controversy occurred in 2011, when kindergartens and schools in Denmark canceled their traditional Christmas celebrations so as not to offend Muslims, who are already the second-largest religion in the country, and who are densely concentrated in ghettos in large cities.
France, the European country with the most immigrants of Arab origin, has also been de-Christianizing Christmas for years. After the jihadist attack against a Christmas market in Strasbourg in 2018, far from redoubling the defense of freedom and pride in their Christian traditions, political leaders intensified the secularist drift, and this year there are already a majority of French cities whose authorities have decided to eliminate Christian referencing in Christmas celebrations, sometimes going to ridiculous extremes. Nantes is now celebrating its “Winter Journey” (whatever that means), Angers is observing “Winter Suns,” Bordeaux is touting “Bordeaux in festivities,” and Saint Denis is holding a Christmas vacation called “Destination Beautiful Winter” while its mayor celebrates the holiday by shouting “Happy Winter!” The official festive brochure of this French community includes puppets, fire-eaters, craft workshops for children, and no iconic Christian Christmas imagery.
In his 2004 epic Wall Street Journal essay “It’s the Demography, Stupid,” Mark Steyn warned:
Most people reading this have strong stomachs, so let me lay it out as baldly as I can: Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries. There’ll probably still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy or the Netherlands–probably–just as in Istanbul there’s still a building called St. Sophia’s Cathedral. But it’s not a cathedral; it’s merely a designation for a piece of real estate. Likewise, Italy and the Netherlands will merely be designations for real estate. The challenge for those who reckon Western civilization is on balance better than the alternatives is to figure out a way to save at least some parts of the West.
Otherwise, JD Vance will be correct: Trump’s vice-president pick JD Vance joked UK could be ‘first Islamist country to have nuclear weapons’ under Labour.