EU Parliament Welcomes Christmas Nativity Scene. So Should We.

For the first time ever, the European Union Parliament has allowed a Christmas creche to be set up on the grounds. In years past, it was not allowed because there was no room in the…

Year after year, officials slammed the door on the image of the Christ child at Christmas. The traditional Christmas creche, the nativity scene, is a Christmas tradition first introduced into European culture almost a thousand years ago by the medieval mendicant friar Francis of Assisi.

The reason given by parliamentary officials was that it could be “potentially offensive.” Not offensive but, in classic bureaucratic Newspeak, “potentially offensive.” And maybe they are right. This is a continent where children are something of an endangered species as populations plummet far below replacement levels. The presence of a child who many claim to be the son of God could rattle many a conscience. It certainly rattled King Herod when he decided to put all the children under two years old to the sword in Bethlehem when he heard of Jesus’s birth. That wasn’t exactly a Hallmark Christmas movie.

Isabel Benjumea, a Spanish lawmaker, was the force of nature that melted the cold hearts in Brussels. Keeping the tradition of the creche is one more small step towards saving Christmas. The idea that a religious belief that formed Europe can only be allowed inside the four walls of your home or a church building does not bode well for a free society. No one has a right to banish the culture of a people in order to create some ideological political utopia — a name that literally means nowhere.

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The roots of Europe were formed by the development of a Christian culture that tamed the barbarian hordes to the point that they literally replaced the Romans as rulers of the continent. In rejecting its past, Europe is falling into a dark night, one which lacks the will to live on in its children.

In America, this attack on the Christian past has been part of a parallel struggle to retain what is great in our culture and history from those who want to replace the real presence of God in our communal life with his real absence. An unmerciful bureaucracy has issued a parallel code of Woke commandments and is working feverishly to spread this depressing idolatry, one where the state holds the people in thrall.

It is better to set up one Christmas creche than to curse that darkness. The desolation of a culture where man focuses only on himself is a cold dystopian world ruled by drugs, despotism, and death. The strong rule, and the weak are asked to abandon all hope and devote themselves to amusing themselves to death. This is the embodiment of the anti-Christmas message.

Christmas is a season that calls us to hope. It is a call to make ourselves at home in this wild world and undertake great things in that magnificent freedom God has given us. G.K. Chesterton, in his poem “The House of Christmas,” wrote, “To the end of the way of the wandering star, To the things that cannot be and that are, To the place where God was homeless, And all men are at home.”

Yes, this is our home. There are more of us than all the innkeepers and gatekeepers, all the men of small minds and smaller hearts. If God is with us, no one can evict us from this home. Our lives matter in that divine drama lived to the full in a world given to us by a generous, loving, and patient God. “Here we have battle and blazing eyes, And chance and honor and high surprise, But our homes are under miraculous skies, Where the yule tale was begun.”

All are welcome at the Nativity scene, from the shepherds to the kings. Those with strong faith, those with weak faith, and those with no faith diligently seeking understanding and truth in the face of a mystery 2,000 years old. Heart speaks to heart if we listen.  All are welcome to the Christmas feast, even members of the European Union Parliament. Have a Merry Christmas.