For the past four decades the political left here in the United States has waged an all out war on Christmas. About half the population has demanded that Merry Christmas be replaced with Happy Holidays; a sizable percentage of the remaining population complies out of fear. Most towns no longer have Christmas Tree lightings, they have winter tree lightings. Schools ban candy canes and Christmas colored wrapping paper. The examples of the lefts war on Christmas in this country are too numerous to chronicle in any single article.
Leftists here in the United States are in rather notorious and infamous company when it comes to waging war on Christmas: How the Soviets Replaced Christmas with a Socialist Winter Holiday | Mises Institute
Initially, the Soviets tried to replace Christmas with a more appropriate komsomol (youth communist league) related holiday, but, shockingly, this did not take. And by 1928 they had banned Christmas entirely, and Dec. 25 was a normal working day.
Then, in 1935, Josef Stalin decided, between the great famine and the Great Terror, to return a celebratory tree to Soviet children. But Soviet leaders linked the tree not to religious Christmas celebrations, but to a secular new year, which, future-oriented as it was, matched up nicely with Soviet ideology.
Ded Moroz [a Santa Claus-like figure] was brought back. He found a snow maid from folktales to provide his lovely assistant, Snegurochka. The blue, seven-pointed star that sat atop the imperial trees was replaced with a red, five-pointed star, like the one on Soviet insignia. It became a civic, celebratory holiday, one that was ritually emphasized by the ticking of the clock, champagne, the hymn of the Soviet Union, the exchange of gifts, and big parties.
American leftists who have been waging war on Christmas are in even worse company: How the Third Reich Remade German Christmas in the Nazi Image | Mises Institute
German National Socialists—also known as the “Nazis”—tried a different tactic. Rather than abolish the observance of Christmas altogether, they attempted to redefine Christmas by making it into a day celebrating the German nation and National Socialist values. This was done by a variety of propaganda efforts designed to blur the line between Christianity and German nationalism while superimposing Nazi iconography on traditional Christmas symbols and images.
While it might appear that National Socialists were more tolerant of the Christian holiday than the French revolutionaries or the Soviets, all three regimes shared the same goal. All three sought to rein in or destroy Christmas because it endured as a reminder of a world view and a historical narrative that was in conflict with the regime’s preferred ideology and version of history. In other words, Christmas—and the international Christian religion it helped perpetuate—presented a competing world view that was outside the direct control of the state. This made Christianity a rival that no totalitarian was inclined to tolerate.
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