Who stole Christmas? An investigation into an annual panic

Every year, someone steals Christmas. Every year, Christmas survives. Amid supermarkets, algorithms, courts, and collective fear, the celebration does not disappear, but becomes the ideal pretext for outrage.
Who stole our Christmas? An investigation into an annual panic. Display the information of the image
No one cares whether Ursula von der Leyen likes Christmas or not. The truth is that the European Commission will never tell how many ornaments to put on a Christmas tree or how long you should keep it at home for this to be "correct" according to a European directive. Just like this image, any idea that someone is stealing your Christmas is a falsehood. In the meantime, we hope you have happy holidays and that you enjoy the article and the image. There is no evidence that Ursula von der Leyen has ever stolen anyone's tree, nor do we believe she could ever do such a thing.
In a neighborhood corner that still retains the bourgeois air of a Brussels that the migrants who populate it know nothing about, there is an oriental supermarket. Large, set up like a supermarché, filled with products that can only be found in communities that fail to detach from childhood food, maternal accents, and the customs they or their parents brought to the colorful capital of united Europe. Alongside products that attract minorities of a cosmopolitan society that almost erases the idea of minority, the store is a Lego replica of a long-gone empire. Turks, Eastern Europeans, Arabs, and anyone else who has ever eaten pickles, sumac, or sweets soaked in syrup mix without any regressive stress that the Balkans may have left in the unconscious memories with which they landed in Brussels. The store is Turkish, most likely, it could also be Arabic, but for a modern Eastern European, the differences are minimal. Of course, such confusion could generate nervousness and irritation. But let’s acknowledge that such labels are applied left and right, without any discrimination. At least 90% of the planet has no idea that Bucharest and Budapest are two different cities, in two countries that have nothing in common, except for millions of people who consider themselves of a different nationality than the country they are in and who share a common history of a thousand or two thousand years, depending on which nationalist you ask.

So it is of little importance who opened the store for our analysis of who dared to forbid us to celebrate Christmas as the good Christians we are. Before going into details, it is enough to say that the store was full of garlands and that, at the entrance, there stood a Christmas tree in full regulation, enough to confuse any right-believing person who cannot help but wonder what the person next to him believes.
And here the comedy begins, with its serious part.

Because if "Brussels has banned Christmas," someone forgot to send the circular to the neighborhood supermarkets and to the Brussels city hall, which describes on its site "Winter Wonders" as explicitly including a "Christmas market" and a Christmas tree in Grand-Place. Not to mention the thousands of chalets in all European cities, festively decorated and selling everything from mulled wine and waffles, donuts or smoutenballen with powdered sugar to all forms of sausages ever invented. And yet, the legend persists. Not only does it persist, but it returns annually, like a carol sung by someone who doesn’t know the lyrics but is determined to be upset.

Let’s briefly make an anatomy of this legend and a taxonomy of the "Christmas thieves," so that, in the most Sherlock Holmes-like way possible, we can see who the twelve are that stole our Christmas.

How the eurocrats from Berlaymont tried to ban Christmas
This legend is bimotor, powered by two sources that never fail when it comes to fabricating a more glamorous falsehood than the real one. On one hand, the small and murky but real engine of bureaucracy that does not double-check an idea and believes that the world can adapt to any framework, no matter how poorly assembled it is. On the other hand, the roaring and polluting combustion engine under a shiny veneer: the media industry. Between the two, almost anything can be transformed into a setup for a civilizational war.

The administrative kernel is a paper written for people who do not live among people, an internal guide that does not understand that, in Europe, in December, words have weight and cannot be moved from one shelf to another like canned goods. In 2021, the European Commission published a set of internal recommendations for "inclusive communication" that suggested, among other things, that phrases like "holiday season" or "holiday period" be preferred instead of "Christmas period" in certain contexts. Helena Dalli, the equality commissioner at that time, may have thought she was making a great act of cultural openness and that she was expecting a red carpet at the entrance to the gallery of politicians who know how to make a narrative twist to become famous. Only that it was not to be.

The scandal began in Italy, where several politicians from Silvio Berlusconi's party, led by the former president of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, harshly criticized the proposal. And, as misfortune never comes alone, the Vatican also entered the dispute, from where the Secretary of State of the Holy See, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, spoke about "the cancellation of our roots, the Christian dimension of our Europe."

Under public pressure, the proposal was withdrawn, the commissioner apologized, and the offended camp celebrated the victory as a historic one, comparable only to that of Saint George against the dragon. However, the execution had already been enough to instantly ignite a new negative myth about Brussels, and the storm in a teacup remained sedimented in the mythology of eurocrats without faith.

The engine of the interpretation industry completes the picture. Social networks, politicians who need a scarecrow every season, and part of the press that knows that "the ban" sells, while the "withdrawn internal recommendation" sleeps on the shelf, constantly add fuel to the fire. Not everything that is criticizable is apocalyptic, but without the hyperbole of the "now or never" type, you don’t create visuals. From the moment someone wrote "cancel Christmas," the story became recyclable and will exist as long as Christmas itself exists. You pull it out every year, translate it into every language, serve it with fresh outrage, and the audience, tired and hurried, has the feeling that they have heard this carol before, so it must be true. The fact that, after four years, the same statement is still rolling around says everything about how well the mechanism works.

The truth is, if the truth still matters, that there has never been and there is no European Union policy that "bans Christmas." However, there are enough moments of institutional clumsiness, enough wooden language, and enough appetite for cultural war to produce, year after year, the same story, exactly when people are most sensitive to symbols and laziest to verify. Taken out of its emotional packaging and placed on the table, the story is banal.

Consumers or how Baby Jesus ended up in the Q4 Excel
If there is a suspect that has not been hiding for years, it is consumerism, the only "Christmas thief" that does not even deny the act. In this version of the legend, Christmas has not been banned, but transformed into the fourth quarter, a Q4 with tinsel, LED lights, and sales targets. Advent is no longer a time of waiting, but of conversion. The tree becomes a campaign prop, the carol a jingle, and Santa Claus a walking KPI. No one talks about conspiracies; it is enough to look in your inbox, where, since November, Christmas comes in the form of a "last chance offer."

The mechanism is banal and precisely for that reason effective. Black Friday extends organically until December 24, social pressure transforms the gift from a gesture into an obligation, and its absence into a small moral guilt. "If you love, you buy" becomes the axiom of the season. The proofs are everywhere and hard to contest: record volumes of advertising, increases in household spending, financial anxiety masked in festive joy. Here, there is no need for sophisticated disinformation; reality is visible enough. Christmas does not disappear, but moves to the shelf, with a price tag and a deadline.

And yet, the irony is that this accusation is itself incomplete. The commercialization of Christmas is not a product of digital capitalism, but an old process of over a century. Cultural historians show that, since the 19th century, with urbanization and the emergence of large stores, Christmas has become a ritualized consumption holiday. People have not abandoned meaning; they have packaged it. The tree in the shop window and the tree in the living room coexist. The ritual does not disappear because there are ads, but survives despite them. If someone "stole" Christmas, then we must admit that they stole it with our consent, in installments and with a receipt.

Looked at closely, Christmas is neither the lost paradise of nostalgic ads nor the consumerist dystopia of indignant speeches. Research shows rather a structural ambivalence: people criticize commercialization but actively participate in it, sometimes with a weary lucidity. For adults, Christmas is no longer magic, but a project. Lists, schedules, cleaning, calculations, compromises. A ritual that requires work, time, and emotional energy, under the pressure of a collective expectation to "be good." It is precisely this tension that makes the holiday simultaneously loved and exhausting, celebrated and detested.

In this decor, the gift and the gestures associated with it are not simple objects or traditions emptied of meaning, but fragile tools of social negotiation. How much you give, to whom you give, when you give, and what you give become questions with symbolic stakes. Mistakes are paid for with shame, tensions, or small status fractures. Similarly, seemingly banal behaviors, shared meals, visits, storytelling, or playing with children gain an unusual social density when compressed into a few days. Christmas thus functions as an intensely lit stage where relationships, hierarchies, and identities are exposed, tested, and reevaluated. Commercialization does not annul this mechanism but offers it the decor. And the fragility of meaning explains why Christmas is so easily instrumentalized and so hard to "steal" for real.

Christmas stolen by mistake, with HR approval
If we were to give a bureaucratic face to the idea that "Christmas has been stolen," it would carry an access badge, write emails in bullet points, and start every message with "Dear all." In this version of the story, the culprit is not abstract Brussels, but the concrete corporation, with its HR department, which would have decided, in an excess of caution, that "Merry Christmas" is a risky phrase. From here to the conclusion that you are no longer allowed to say Christmas was a very short road, traveled at maximum speed on social networks.

The mechanism is, again, banal and perfectly bureaucratic. To avoid complaints, misunderstandings, or unnecessary scandals, large companies standardize language. Templates appear, internal guides, "safe" phrases that can be sent to everyone without triggering legal or reputational alarms. "Happy Holidays" does not replace "Merry Christmas" as an ideological dogma, but as an operational default, just as "Dear customer" replaces "Dear Mr. Popescu." When this logic comes out of the intranet and reaches in the form of a screenshot on Facebook, it instantly becomes proof that "we are no longer allowed."

The irony is that these internal documents are almost always recommendations, not prohibitions. No one kicks you out for saying "Merry Christmas" to your office colleague. But in a world of collective emails and standardized communication, what is not recommended seems, for many, already forbidden. HR does not erase traditions but tries to reduce risks. The problem is that, in this process, it produces exactly the kind of flat, contextless language that fuels nostalgia and suspicion. Christmas does not disappear from the corporation, but becomes optional, discreet, and, paradoxically, much more political than it would have been if left alone.

With Christmas in court
If the corporate bureaucrat works with templates, the secularist works with principles, and here the story becomes more rigid and serious. In this version of the "stolen Christmas," the culprit is no longer the market or HR, but the state which, in the name of neutrality, would have decided that the nativity scene has no place in the town hall, that religious symbols must be kept at a distance, and that the public space must be cleansed of the signs of a majority faith. It is not a conspiracy, but a conflict of political philosophies over a century old, which reappears with a suspicious regularity in December, when emotion beats the constitutional law manual.

The mechanism is legal and, precisely for that reason, hard to explain in short headlines. Secularism is not applied through slogans, but through litigation, administrative decisions, and jurisprudence, often local and sometimes contradictory. A mayor puts a nativity scene in the town hall lobby "because it’s tradition," a citizen contests the gesture "because the state must be neutral," and the court analyzes the context, intention, placement, and audience. Exactly this happened in France, where, in 2016, it was clarified that the installation of a Christmas crib in a public building is not, by definition, prohibited, but is only legal if it has a cultural, artistic, or festive character and not one of religious proselytism. In short: it depends. A legally reasonable solution and perfectly useless for social networks, where "it depends" is instantly translated into "they took Christmas out of town halls."

The irony is that, since then, the controversy has not ended but has been ritualized. Every year, local cases arise where mayors insist on installing crèches in town halls, sometimes just to provoke reactions, and prefectures or courts are called again to arbitrate the same conflict. The episodes are not about the disappearance of Christmas, but about testing the limits of secularism. Many European legal systems make exactly the distinction that the myth ignores: between the religious symbol as an act of proselytism and the religious symbol as a cultural or heritage element. The nativity scene may be allowed in a festive context and prohibited in another, without this meaning a war against Christmas. But nuance does not sell well. Secularism requires explanations, and Christmas requires emotion. Between the two, the simple story almost always wins, and the secularist remains, in the collective imaginary, the stern official who took the child from the crib and sent him to the archives.

Attacks, barriers, and collective guilt
If the secularist works with principles and the judge with jurisprudence, the migrant works, in this story, as the perfect symbol of contemporary fear. In this version of the stolen Christmas, the culprit is no longer an institution, but "them." A vague presence, rarely precisely named, which would have succeeded in performing the feat of transforming a two-millennia-old holiday into an exercise of collective self-censorship. "Because of them" we are no longer allowed carols, trees, or the word Christmas. The narrative does not feed on public policies, but on a mix of identity anxiety and traumatic memory, gathered from real episodes but reinterpreted to the point of distortion.

There are, of course, facts that fuel fear. The attack at the Christmas market in Breitscheidplatz, Berlin, in 2016, committed by Anis Amri, or the attack in Strasbourg, in 2018, where a French jihadist opened fire near the Christmas market, have become fixed landmarks in the European imaginary. They are invoked reflexively, year after year, as proof that "it is no longer safe," that "we are no longer allowed," that "Christmas is not like it used to be." The fact that these attacks are the work of isolated individuals, known to security services, not of "migrants" as a group, quickly gets lost in emotional translation. The real trauma is recycled into a general, simple, and wrong explanation.

From here begins the mechanism of disinformation. A tragic and isolated episode is generalized until it becomes a rule. Then it is combined with prudent administrative decisions: more security in markets, barriers, visible police. The result is culturally reinterpreted: "they put up fences, so Christmas is under siege." In this logic, it no longer matters that the measures are taken against terrorist risks, not against traditions. The image of the barrier becomes a symbol, and the symbol beats the context.

The irony, constantly documented in research on migration and disinformation, is that in the vast majority of cases there are no explicit requests from religious minorities for the removal of Christian symbols. Carols are not removed because someone asked for it, but because someone anticipated conflict. The tree does not disappear because it "bothers," but because an institution decided it is safer not to explain anything. Migration thus becomes the scapegoat for the majority's fear, for the unresolved trauma of attacks, and for a bureaucratic reflex of risk avoidance. Christmas is not stolen by those who come from elsewhere. It is locked away, preventively, by a society that no longer knows how to distinguish between security, symbol, and collective guilt.

Contested traditions and childhoods in dispute
If the migrant becomes the symbol of fear, the anti-racism activist becomes the symbol of loss. In this version of the story, Christmas is not attacked from the outside, but "modified from within" by people who would have decided that childhood traditions need to be corrected, adapted, or, at worst, rewritten. The accusation is almost invariably formulated in the plural and with nostalgia: "they change childhood," "it’s not like it used to be," "they take traditions one by one." It is not just about Christmas, but about a broader anxiety related to continuity, to the idea that something that seemed immutable has suddenly entered public negotiation.

The mechanism is visible and, unlike other chapters, is not imaginary. Civic campaigns, public debates, pressure on television, municipalities, and sponsors have produced concrete changes. The most frequently cited case is that of the character Zwarte Piet in the Netherlands and Belgium, where criticism related to blackface and racial stereotypes has gradually led to its replacement with variants like "sooty Piet," with traces of soot on the face, explained narratively as a result of coming down the chimney, not as a racial trait. For some, this is proof that activism has "won" and has begun to cleanse traditions with a moral eraser. For others, it is a necessary adjustment for a society that no longer looks like it did a hundred years ago.

The real conflict, however, is not about theft, but about cultural memory and identity. Christmas does not disappear, holidays do not disappear, joy does not disappear. Eventually, a symbol considered offensive by one part of society disappears and is fiercely defended by another precisely because it has always been "there." Anti-racism does not annul the ritual, but forces it to explain itself, and explanations hurt. At this point, Christmas becomes a stage for a deeper debate: who decides what is tradition, who has the right to change it, and how much of our childhood is intangible heritage and how much is, in fact, the product of an era that no longer exists.

The symbolic weight of invisible elites
If the bureaucrat is the accidental suspect, the migrant the symbol of fear, and the anti-racism activist the bearer of moral guilt, the "globalists" and "cultural elites" become, in this mythology, the architects. In their version, Christmas is not just attacked or adjusted, but strategically targeted as part of a coherent project to dilute the nation, the family, and religion. Nothing is coincidental, nothing is local, everything is part of a plan. This explanation has a major advantage: it is elastic enough to absorb any social discomfort and vague enough not to be easily disproven.

The mechanism is the classic one of the "us vs. them" narratives. "We," those anchored in tradition, identity, and memory, and "they," a cosmopolitan, mobile, educated elite that no longer needs Christmas because it no longer needs roots. Here we are no longer talking about internal guides or local decisions, but about viral collages, lists of "bans" recycled annually, quotes taken out of context and placed under pictures of European flags or glass buildings. The proof is not the document, but the feeling that "something is happening." In this logic, the absence of evidence becomes evidence: if you don’t see the written policy, it means it is hidden.

A revealing example comes from Spain, where the seemingly banal dispute between "Feliz Navidad" and "Felices fiestas" has been transformed into a front of cultural battle. The left is accused of deliberately avoiding the word "Navidad" to dilute Christian identity, while the right is accused of artificially importing the American model of "war on Christmas" into a context that never had it organically. The difference in wording, often administrative or stylistic, is read conspiratorially, as a sign of a coordinated cultural strategy.

The counterargument, however boring it may sound, is also the most solid: there is almost always a lack of verifiable policy. There are no documents, laws, or directives that support the idea of an organized "cancellation" of Christmas. "Globalism" functions here as a narrative container into which fears related to migration, secularization, cultural capitalism, or loss of control can be poured. Christmas is not stolen by an invisible elite, but used as a total symbol, emotionally charged enough to shape any discontent that has not yet found a precise name.

The economy of outrage and the viral holiday
If the "globalists" are the invisible architects, the platforms are the amplifiers. In this version of the story, Christmas is not stolen, but monetized through scandal. It does not disappear, but is filtered through a lens that privileges outrage at the expense of context. Any marginal episode becomes proof, any nuance becomes betrayal, any internal recommendation transforms into a "ban." The platforms are accused of turning December into a season of permanent conflict, where calm does not perform, and the calm explanation is penalized by the algorithm as boring.

The mechanism is technical, but the effect is emotional. Recommendation systems favor content that provokes quick reactions, anger, fear, or irony, and push in front exactly that which confirms an already existing suspicion. "Ragebait" works impeccably: headlines that suggest bans without naming them, clips taken out of context, identical posts translated into multiple languages and published in sync. When you see the same story in Romanian, Spanish, German, and French, the impression is not of manipulation, but of confirmation: "if it appears everywhere, it must be true." This is how the parallel reality of Christmas under siege is constructed.

The counterargument is, again, uncomfortable for those looking for a clear culprit. Technology does not invent anxieties; it scales them. Algorithms do not create the fear of losing identity, but make it constant and profitable. The solution is not to return to a mythical internet that never existed, but a mix of responsible design and media education: curb automatic amplification, attach contexts to content, and a public less willing to confuse virality with truth. In other words, Christmas is not destroyed by platforms, but recycled annually into a form that brings clicks. And that says more about the attention economy than about the holiday.

When the fence makes more noise than the tree
If platforms turn outrage into traffic, the security apparatus transforms risk into decor. In this version of the stolen Christmas, the culprit is no longer an ideology or a cultural intention, but a permanent state of alert. Metal barriers, baggage checks, visible patrols, and strategically parked vehicles around markets are read as a sign that the holiday has been "militarized." You no longer enter a Christmas market; you enter a perimeter. You no longer come to carol; you come "under protection." For many, this is proof that something essential has been lost, even if no one has banned anything.

The mechanism is visual and operates almost automatically. A barrier looks like a ban even when it is just a filter. A backpack check resembles a collective suspicion even when it is applied to everyone. Every December, the same images of "restricted" markets circulate, taken out of context or recycled from other years and other cities, presented as proof that "they are closing Christmas markets" or that "you are no longer allowed to gather." The photograph beats the explanation, and the symbol beats reality: the fence becomes more important than the fact that, beyond it, mulled wine is sold, carols are sung, and selfies are taken.

The extension of the narrative goes even further. Security measures, introduced in response to real past attacks, are reinterpreted as cultural policy. Confusion is made between prevention and message, between risk management and the intention to discourage public life. Any temporary adjustment is read as an irreversible trend, any local measure becomes a sign of a "closed" Europe. From here to the conclusion that "Christmas is under siege" is just an emotional step, perfectly compatible with already existing anxieties.

The counterargument remains, however, the same and, precisely for that reason, hard to digest: security measures are not cultural bans. They do not target symbols, but scenarios. They do not "close" markets, but make them accessible under conditions deemed acceptable by authorities. Exaggerations appear when images are torn from context and used as proof of an intention that does not exist. Christmas is not confiscated by security, but lived in a Europe that has learned, sometimes too painfully, to manage public spaces. And if the atmosphere seems changed, it is not because the holiday has been banned, but because fear has become part of the landscape, as present as the lights.

Christmas as an informational weapon
If all the other chapters can be explained by fear, institutional clumsiness, or authentic cultural conflict, here we enter a much colder zone: calculated cynicism. In this last version of the stolen Christmas, the culprits are no longer symbolic, but operational. Disinformation actors who know exactly what they are doing and, above all, when they do it. December is the ideal season. People are tired, emotional, anchored in symbols, and less willing to verify. Exactly the perfect conditions to sell the idea that "something is being taken away." It does not matter whether the story is true; what matters is whether it catches on.

The mechanism is recurrent and almost industrial. The same narratives reappear year after year, with minor adjustments: "the West is abandoning traditions," "Christianity is being removed from public space," "Muslims dictate what we are allowed to celebrate." Added to these are punctual falsehoods, easy to distribute and hard to dismantle emotionally, built from half-truths and ideologically reinterpreted technical details. A classic case is the one according to which, in Sweden, Christmas lights would have been banned to avoid offending Muslims. The story has been circulating for years, periodically reappearing, translated into multiple languages, and presented each time as an alarming novelty. Fact-checking shows, however, a much more banal picture: local safety decisions, costs, energy consumption, or administrative regulations have been ripped from context and transformed into an imaginary cultural attack. Precisely because it returns cyclically, with the same emotional structure, this type of narrative has been documented and dismantled repeatedly.

The counterargument is, here too, devastating in its simplicity. When you check the original source, you do not find religion, but procedure. You do not find requests from minorities, but forced interpretations. You do not find cultural policies, but technical details transformed into symbols. But the goal of disinformation actors is not to convince in the long term, but to erode trust, to create the impression that "something is happening everywhere" and that institutions lie or hide the truth. Christmas is not the ultimate target, but the perfect vehicle: emotionally charged enough to provoke reaction, repetitive enough to seem credible, and emotionally enough to suspend verification. In this sense, Christmas is not stolen. It is exploited. And exploitation works precisely because outrage comes pre-packaged, just like the lights.

***

It is quiet in Brussels. No one is scheming these days to steal Christmas. In the Turkish store, the lights sparkle, indifferent to the cultural war they fuel, without knowing, with every light-up. A few hundred years ago, Eastern Europeans traveled to Istanbul with gifts and bribes for the Grand Sultan. Today, the centuries-old empire of the sultans has disappeared, and the former Eastern European provinces are part of the most ambitious political project ever born on this continent.

The descendants of those who wandered in caftans are peaceful Europeans, who walk to the supermarket for feta, kefir, and pickles, not out of imperial nostalgia, but because the legacy of times they did not live is, first and foremost, culinary. It is unnecessary to say that every empire collapses, sooner or later. It is worth saying that a common market brings together more people than the nervous bickering about the theft of a symbol that lives more vividly than ever in the minds of each of us, not in a deforested tree raised pompously against imaginary enemies who, cyclically, we are told spoil our joys.

Christmas, in fact, does not need to be defended. It does not stand in the windows of town halls, nor in communication forms, nor in televised debates about who is allowed to say what. It stands exactly where it has always stood: in small everyday habits, in improvised meals, in repetitive paths, in reflexes that are not discussed because they do not need justification. When a symbol needs to be defended daily on Facebook, it is already a sign that the problem is not the symbol, but the anxiety of the one who defends it.

In Brussels and everywhere else, Christmas is not stolen. It is consumed, negotiated, ironized, repeated. Like any living thing. And the fact that it continues to exist despite all those who declare it annually "under siege" says something essential about its resilience. It is not a fragile holiday, but one that withstands our projections, our frustrations, and even our periodic need to find a culprit. Perhaps that is why it never disappears. Because, unlike empires, Christmas has no command center.

https://2eu.brussels/en/analyses/who-stole-our-christmas-an-investigation-into-an-annual-panic