How the far right stole Christmas

ROME — Christmas is becoming a new front line in Europe’s culture wars.

Far-right parties are claiming the festive season as their own, recasting Christmas as a marker of Christian civilization that is under threat and positioning themselves as its last line of defense against a supposedly hostile, secular left.

The trope echoes a familiar refrain across the Atlantic that was first propagated by Fox News, where hosts have inveighed against a purported “War on Christmas” for years. U.S. President Donald Trump claims to have “brought back” the phrase “Merry Christmas” in the United States, framing it as defiance against political correctness. Now, European far-right parties more usually focused on immigration or law-and-order concerns have adopted similar language, recasting Christmas as the latest battleground in a broader struggle over culture.

In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has made the defense of Christmas traditions central to her political identity. She has repeatedly framed the holiday as part of the nation’s endangered heritage, railing against what she calls “ideological” attempts to dilute it.

“How can my culture offend you?” Meloni has asked in the past, defending nativity scenes in public spaces. She has argued that children should learn the values of the Nativity — rather than just associating Christmas with food and presents — and rejected the idea that long-standing traditions should be altered. This year, Meloni said she was abstaining from alcohol until Christmas, portraying herself as a practitioner of spirituality and tradition.  

France’s National Rally and Spain’s Vox have similarly opposed secularist or “woke” efforts to replace religious imagery with neutral seasonal language, and advocated for nativity scenes in town halls. In Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has warned that Christmas markets are losing their “German character,” amplifying disinformation about Muslim traditions edging out Christian ones.

Christmas spectacle

But Meloni’s party, Brothers of Italy, has turned the message into spectacle. Each December it hosts a Christmas-themed political festival — complete with Santa, ice-skating, and a towering Christmas tree lit in the colors of the Italian tricolor.

Once held quietly in late summer, the event, named Atreyu — after a character in the fantasy film The NeverEnding Story — has since moved to the prestigious Castel Sant’Angelo, drawing families, tourists and the politically curious. Brothers of Italy said on their Whatsapp Channel that the festival had been “a success without precedent. Record numbers, real participation and a community that grows from year to year, demonstrating how it has become strong, like Italy.”

Daniel, a 26-year-old tourist from Mallorca, who declined to give his last name because he did not want to be associated with a far right political event, said he and a friend wandered in after spotting the lights and music. “Then we realized it was about politics,” he said, laughing.

Cultural Christianity

For party figures, the symbolism is explicit. “For us, traditions represent our roots, who we are, who we have been, and the history that made us what we are today,” said Marta Schifone, a Brothers of Italy MP. “Those roots must be celebrated and absolutely defended.”

That message resonates with younger supporters too. Alessandro Meriggi, a student and leader in Azione Universitaria, the party’s youth wing, said Italy is founded on specific values that newcomers should respect. “In a country like Italy, you can’t ask schools to remove the crucifix,” he said. “It represents our values.”

Religion, however, often feels almost beside the point. Many of the politicians leading these campaigns are not especially devout, and only a minority of their voters are practicing Christians. What matters is Christianity as culture, a civilizational shorthand that draws a boundary between “us” and “them.”

“In the 1980s and 1990s, the radical right largely kept its distance from the church,” said Daniele Albertazzi, a professor at the University of Surrey who researches populism. “That changed between 2010–15, following Islamic terrorist attacks in Europe, which were framed as a clash of civilizations. Christianity became a cultural marker, a way to portray themselves as defenders of traditional family, tradition and identity.”

Hosting a Christmas festival is a “very intelligent” move by Meloni’s party, he said. “They have tried to reverse the stigma of their past [on the far right] by becoming a broad-church modern conservative party, and this is part of the repackaging.”

That strategy benefits from the left’s discomfort with religion in public life. Progressive parties and institutions, including the EU, have tried to emphasize inclusivity by using neutral phrases like “holiday season,” which for the far right amounts to cultural self-loathing. In Italy this year, the League and Brothers of Italy have attacked several schools that removed religious references from Christmas songs. In Genoa, right-wing parties accused the city’s left-wing mayor of delivering a “slap in the face to tradition” after she chose not to display a nativity scene in her offices.

“We’re not embarrassed to say ‘Merry Christmas,’” said Lucio Malan, a Brothers of Italy senator, at Meloni’s festival. “I have always promoted religious freedom and know not everyone is Christian. But Christmas is the holiday people care about most. Let’s not forget its origins.”

The irony, critics note, is that many Christmas traditions are relatively modern, shaped as much by commerce as by religion. Yet Christmas remains politically potent precisely because it is emotive, tied to family rituals, childhood memories and local identity.

For Meloni’s government, taking ownership of Christmas fits a broader project to reclaim control over cultural institutions from public broadcasting to museums and opera, after what it sees as decades of left-wing dominance. The narrative of the far right as the defenders of Christmas presents a challenge for mainstream parties who have struggled to find a compelling counter-argument to convincingly defend secularism.

And nowhere is that clearer than at the Brothers of Italy’s Christmas festival itself. As dusk falls over Castel Sant’Angelo, families skate to a soundtrack of Christmas pop, children pose for photos with Santa, and tourists wander in, drawn by lights and music rather than ideology. Politics is present, but softened, wrapped in nostalgia, tradition and seasonal cheer.