“Hide this Christmas that I cannot see. This transposition of the famous replica of Tartuffe has never been so topical. The last example comes from the European Commission. Last October, Equality Commissioner Helena Dalli published a document aimed at “illustrating the diversity of European culture”. It was a question, it was said, of “highlighting the inclusive nature” of the Commission “towards all walks of life and all the convictions of European citizens”.
It was obviously Christmas that was the first target of this vade-mecum of linguistic rectitude. As many Europeans are not Christians, we should prefer the insipid “Happy Holidays” to the untimely “Merry Christmas”. In short, to erase the meaning of this date which punctuates our calendar since in 532 the Scythian monk Dionysius the Little proposed to the Church to count the years from the birth of Christ, and no longer from the founding of Rome. . Since stupidity generally moves in herds, the commissioner also invited her members to abandon the expression “Ladies and Gentlemen” and to avoid first names with too Christian sounds, such as “Marie” and “Jean”.
We could laugh at these extravagances if they did not come from so high. In Bordeaux, the inhabitants never cease to vilify against the environmentalist mayor Pierre Hurmic. Last year, he had decided to send a walk a tradition that had become Christian from the XVIe century: the Christmas tree. Under the pretext that it was a “dead tree”, the one that decorated Place Pey-Berland was replaced by a heap of scrap metal and glass 11 meters high. When will cut flowers and mistletoe be banned?
In Paris, citizens spontaneously contributed to erect a real Christmas tree in front of the town hall at 12e district instead of the dreadful wooden cones placed on the square. This is not to mention the controversies that regularly arouse traditional nurseries in cities as diverse as Lyon, Bézier and Melun. Strangely, the astonishing hatred of this popular Nativity symbol by some seems inversely proportional to the wonder it elicits in children. It doesn’t matter what their parents believe.
“Unbelievable but true: the day has arrived. We must now try to save Christmas, ”exclaimed this week the philosopher and MEP François-Xavier Bellamy. Because this new cult of diversity seems above all to delight in the erasure of a certain popular culture and everything that evokes Christianity. Is it a coincidence that, on December 8, in Nanterre, a procession of Catholics was attacked in general indifference to cries of “Mécréants” and “I am going to cut your throat”?
In her latest book with prophetic accents, the philosopher Chantal Delsol predicts The end of Christendom (Éditions du Cerf). Of course, it does not speak of the Church and of religion itself, but of the civilization which has been built around them and which they have inspired for sixteen centuries. Malraux did not say anything else when he affirmed that “the nature of a civilization is what is gathered around a religion”. And he added: “Our civilization is incapable of building a temple or a tomb. It will be forced to find its fundamental value, or it will decompose. “
According to Delsol, this scenario is in the making. We can challenge or relativize this judgment, to say the least definitive, but it could help to explain why the speeches of virtue so often replace political reflection. According to Delsol, it is the breaking point where we are that explains this explosion of moralism in areas formerly reserved for political thought. As if we asked the politician to heal souls, which he obviously will never be able to do.
We think of the new ecological religion with its sermons, its great public liturgies, its expiatory rites and its saints. We obviously think of the ” cancel culture Which operates largely in a religious fashion and even goes so far as to burn books and demonize words. Even the new racialist thought is reminiscent of the American phenomenon of “Born Again”. This is evidenced by the real public confessions in which some of his influential thinkers indulge in the mode of revelation.
This is what Delsol calls “the religion of morality”. In Le Figaro, she explained that these utopias having “replaced the kingdom of God by the terrestrial utopia, they believe in perfection and no longer take realities into account. By abandoning transcendence, they ceased to be promises and became programs. […] Hence a morality that is both despotic and unrealistic ”.
This is what would explain the astonishing intransigence of the new censors who seek to govern even the most intimate thoughts of each one. Let’s take the opportunity to wish us a Merry Christmas before some enlightened one has the absurd idea of forbidding us…