Italy’s ruling far-right party has identified a new battleground in its war to protect the country’s “cultural roots”: the school nativity scene.
A draft law proposed on Wednesday by the Brothers of Italy party (FdI) seeks to clamp down on schools that hold general celebrations in the holiday season thereby acknowledging the growing diversity of Italy’s classrooms.
“For some years now we have witnessed unacceptable and embarrassing decisions by some schools that ban nativity scenes or modify the deep essence of Christmas by transforming it into improbable winter festivities so as not to offend believers of other religions,” said Lavinia Mennuni, an FdI senator and primary signatory of the proposed bill.
According to the party, which is led by the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, the move “is absolutely essential to safeguard and protect [Italy’s] cultural roots, which are exemplified by the nativity scene”. If passed the new legislation would mean headteachers who continued to remove nativity scenes would face disciplinary measures.
The proposal was immediately attacked by opposition parties, who described it as yet another attempt by Meloni’s party to exploit religion for political purposes.
“Punctual as a Swiss clock, during Christmas, the rightwing proposals to safeguard Italian Christian traditions return,” said Riccardo Magi, secretary of the leftwing party More Europe (Più Europa).
Alluding to the government’s anti-immigrant agenda, Magi said: “[This is] the same right wing, led by Giorgia Meloni, for whom today, the holy family fleeing from persecution would probably end up in a detention centre, maybe in Albania, waiting to find out from some judge in Italy whether or not they are worthy of setting foot on Italian territory.”
Meloni’s government announced this year a controversial plan to house up to 3,000 asylum seekers in Albania while they wait for their claims to be processed.
Magi said the disconnect between this kind of policy and the proposed nativity scene law was full of “hypocrisy, bordering on blasphemy”. He slammed the government for “safeguarding religious symbols as if they were aspects of folklore and making rescues more difficult for those risking their lives at sea”.
Meloni’s rise to power has been marked by frequent references to religion and Christian identity, telling supporters on the campaign trail in 2019: “I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am Christian. No one will take that away from me.”
This not the first time that her party has proposed a law aimed at safeguarding the Catholic religion. Last summer, FdI prepared a draft law intended to ban Muslim prayer spaces outside of mosques, and aimed to prohibit the use of garages and industrial warehouses as mosques.
The proposed nativity scene bill bemoans the “absolutely unacceptable” decision of some schools to rebrand Christmas as a winter festival. This has, it claims, led to “a festival devoid of any historical and cultural commemorative context pertaining to our nation and which, lacking any ethical content, is destined to assume a purely hedonistic-consumeristic connotation”.
Mennuni said: “Allowing the transformation of sacred Christian festivities into another anonymous type of celebration would constitute discrimination against the students and their respective families practising the majority religion.”
