France: War against Christmas cribs

Since early December, in several cities in France, legal action has been taken by proponents of radical secularism against Nativity scenes set up in public places. So it is in the commune [township] of Béziers, whose mayor, Robert Ménard (on the picture), had a Christmas crèche displayed in his town hall. At the request of the Front de Gauche [Left Front], the chief administrator of Hérault directed the mayor of Béziers to take down that crèche, which the latter refuses to do. In Vendée, the same hatred was manifested after the installation of a crèche at the entrance to the Regional Council building; the Nativity scene was removed after the ruling of the administrative court of Nantes, following a complaint by La Libre Pensée [Freethinking]. On December 12 the Regional Council decided to appeal that decision.

The Catholic hierarchy is content to calm down the debate. Monsignor Bernard Podvin, spokesman for the Bishops’ Conference of France, assured the press that the Church respected the neutrality of the State, but noted that someone would have “to be blind not to notice that the crèche moves the populace from an emotional perspective that is much broader than its religious significance.”

On December 5, L’Observatoire de la laïcité [a French government office, roughly “Secularity Watch”] recalled that the 1905 law establishing the separation of Church and State forbids the presence of religious symbols in public places, while pointing out that it was up to the judges to examine each situation on a case-by-case basis, because local cultural traditions may be legal arguments. In France, however, there is not yet any jurisprudence on this issue. During a press conference at the headquarters of the Radical Left Party (Parti radical de gauche, PRG), Senator Françoise Laborde criticized Secularity Watch, although she sits on that board with three other representatives and senators: “It is soft.... It issues empty communiqués. Instead of keeping these things in line, Secularity Watch covers up problems,” she explained, saying that she was “not satisfied” with its work in this instance. Like her, other members of Security Watch think that this institution, set up by François Hollande in April 2013, minimizes the threats that fundamentalist movements pose for this agreement in the French Republic, “especially those coming from Islam.”

And so, rather than attacking Islamic fundamentalism energetically, the Grand Orient of France [a governing body in Freemasonry] preferred to formulate on December 9—which was proclaimed “Secularity Day” in memory of the law of separation passed on December 9, 1905—25 propositions for a “reinforcement” of secularity. They call for the amendment of the French Constitution so as to enshrine in it the first two articles of the 1905 law, the gradual ousting of the concordat governmental system in Alsace-Moselle [which has special local laws since the area reverted to France after World War I], etc., etc.

In the December 8 issue of the publication Famille chrétienne, Jean Paillot, a barrister in Strasbourg and an expert consultant to the Council of Europe, explained that by the Lautsi decision, which concerned the presence of crucifixes in Italian public schools, “the European Court specified that ‘regulations giving preponderant visibility to the majority religion of the country’ are not enough to amount to an attack on the principle of neutrality. The same goes when it is a question of a simple tradition or custom.” According to Jean Paillot, “The conclusion to be drawn is clear: just like a crucifix in a public school of a traditionally Christian country, a Nativity scene or a Christmas tree in a town hall or a French Regional Council are not contrary to the principle of neutrality.”

In the French weekly newspaper Le Point dated December 9, essayist Jean-Paul Brighelli denounces “what is hidden behind the prohibition of Christmas cribs”. In his view, those who, in the name of secularity, take offense at Nativity scenes in public places in reality want to eradicate our traditions so as to impose multiculturalism: “Oh, how malicious they are! They wrap themselves in the flag of secularity, the better to impose a multiculturalist society on us! They pretend to act in the name of the 1905 law, when their personal agenda is to make France receptive to communitarianism, the rampant onset of which is the sign of the dilution of our society! ... For the ‘ayatollahs of secularity’ (Robert Ménard’s expression) who are rising up, in the Vendée and elsewhere, against this popular tradition that does no one any harm and supports the figurine industry, from Aubagne to Marseilles, have in mind perhaps an agenda quite different from strict observance of the 1905 law.... From now on, Islam will have the right to claim the same treatment, asserting that it is the cultural tradition of tomorrow, since very soon the cultural traditions of yesterday will have been eradicated.” He concludes: “In order to put an end to this, it is necessary to proclaim that, yes, France can be dissolved in communitarianism and multiculturalism. Yes, it is soluble and will soon be dissolved.”

In the December 5 issue of Le Figaro, under the headline “War declared against Christmas”, the sociologist Mathieu Bock-Côté shows that opposition to the presence of Nativity scenes in the public square has existed for many years across the Atlantic: “This quarrel is not new. Most importantly, it is not exclusively French. Indeed, for more than twenty years it has been making its way through all Western societies. It was first named in the United States, where they talk about the ‘war on Christmas’, but it is also waged elsewhere. In Quebec too, for about a decade, it has become a ritual that starts on December 1, even though its intensity varies from year to year.

“We can mention some of its manifestations. In 2007, the National Assembly had rechristened the Christmas tree that it lights up each year a ‘holiday tree’ [‘arbre des festivités’]. In 2009, in one of the ‘trendiest’ districts in Montreal, a strange greeting ‘Merry December’ had replaced the traditional ‘Merry Christmas’, which had already given way to ‘Happy Holidays’, which was less suspect of showing preference for Christianity in the public square. This initiative came from the businessmen’s association in the district. Other examples come to mind. In 2006, Patrimoine Canada, the Canadian federal government institution responsible for culture, had proposed replacing reference to Christmas in its internal communications with an apparently more agreeable reference to the winter solstice. In the federal government, once again, in 2011, management tried to remove the Christmas trees from the offices of Service Canada because it supposedly was a discriminatory symbol.

“These efforts are conducted in the schools, too, where Christmas carols are often censored from Christmas music programs. Indeed, this is about eradicating the last traces of Christianity from the public square, so as to neutralize it. More broadly, they will gradually erase anything that might connect public institutions to a particular civilization, to any particular historical memory. It is by cutting each Western society off from its history that they will really open it up to different customs and other cultures.

“But you would be wrong to see these efforts as merely the work of radical secularism. Although the secularist argument still serves to justify this public censorship of Christianity, something other than traditional secularism is fueling it. More often than not, the symbols of Christmas are attacked in the first place not as religious symbols, but as symbols identifying the ‘Christian majority’ whose symbolic privileges ought to be disputed. In fact this is a manifestation of the multiculturalism debate. From the perspective of multiculturalism, what was formerly considered as the nation, identified by its culture, history and civilization, is now just one form of communitarianism among others, whose privileges must be disputed. They want to deconstruct national culture, the better to welcome the new arrivals. They forget one thing, though: although all convictions are naturally equal before the law, all religions are not equal with regard to [national] identity.

“But for the multiculturalists, there will be no real democracy except by publicly integrating the religious and identifying symbols of the different communities that are transplanted by immigration. Proof of this is the fact that this suspicious zeal to dechristianize the public square is often accompanied by militant efforts to promote the recognition of Islam. The reader will recall, incidentally, the Tuot Report (2013) that urged France to own up to its Arabic, Near Eastern population. Complacency about the various identifying and religious claims associated with Islam is evidence of this state of mind. Some will view this as yet another opportunity to have done with a Eurocentric or Christocentric civilization. Then they will invite public institutions to adjust their calendars, their cafeteria menus, their ceremonials, so as to adapt them to the various religious minorities. The religious heritage of the host country is negative as a matter of principle, whereas that of the communities that arose from immigration is systematically positive.”

In the December 8 issue of Le Figaro, under the headline “The Little Figurines that Endanger Consumerism”, Gaultier Bès, a professor of modern literature, points out another aspect of the war on the crèche: “To sum up, in this new episode in the culture wars between the proponents of non-differentiation and those of rootedness, in these little Nativity scenes displayed publicly, what poses the problem—beyond the collective amnesia that now is now imposed by state censorship, an Orwellian ‘memory hole’—what really shocks the agents of King Money is that in these crèches people already see Jesus blaspheming our false gods.”

(Sources: Aleteia/Apic/IMedia/Croix/Figaro/Point/Famille chrétienne – DICI no. 307 dated December 19, 2014)

Read also :
Bishop Fellay blesses a Nativity Scene at the european parliament of Brussels
How St. Francis set up a Nativity Scene on Christmas Day