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The European Commission is preparing new guidelines for politically correct Christmas speech and is assuring an alarmed European public and the Vatican that it has no intention of abolishing Christmas
Just thirty-five days after it was published, the European Commission (EC) document "Guidelines for Inclusive Communication" was withdrawn due to public pressure, to put it simply because - Christmas.
Namely, in the "Guidelines for inclusive communication" - which define phrases and expressions that will not be considered stigmatizing according to gender, sexual identity, ethnic origin and culture - it is proposed that instead of expressions containing the term "Christmas", such as "Christmas holidays" and "Christmas period", he says "holidays" and "festive period", because it must not be assumed that all the inhabitants of Europe are Christians, i.e., because concepts that are clearly relate to religion.
By the same principle, new terms related to gender, marital status, origin and all types of identity were recommended, so women should not be addressed as "miss" and "ma'am" because that implies their marital status, the collective should not be addressed with "ladies and gentlemen" but with "dear colleagues", and so on, all in that sense.
Information about the existence of such a document was disclosed by the Italian conservative newspaper "Il Giornale", somehow just at the time when the whole of Europe was decorated in anticipation of Christmas. The claim of this newspaper that "in the name of inclusiveness, the European Commission is going so far as to cancel Christmas" was also reported by other European media.
A part of the European public excitedly accused the European Union of wanting to destroy the Christian roots of Europe and its Christian identity and to impose globalism on it as the main ideology of the new world order.
Pope Francis compared the EC's intention to establish verbal equality to the dictatorial regimes of history and recommended that the EU respect the diversity of countries and not make them uniform.
After all that, the document was withdrawn, regardless of the fact that the EC categorically claims that its "Guidelines" were misinterpreted, that everything was intended only as a recommendation to the EC officials in charge of communication.
The word Christmas, writes the EC's defense, was mentioned with the aim of avoiding the use of a form of language that portrays anyone who belongs to a minority as being in a disadvantageous position or something "different". The document does not prohibit the use of the word Christmas, it only recommends that employees be sensitive to the fact that people have different religious traditions and calendars.
EC spokesman Christian Wiegand explained that the Commission does not prohibit or discourage the use of the word "Christmas", but rather aims to "raise awareness that everyone is equal".
The latter, the achievement of the awareness that everyone is equal, reminds us of the basic reason why, after the Second World War, the new government of Yugoslavia abolished Christmas. In order to solve the problem of multiconfessionalism, which during the war proved to be one of the visible reasons for ethnic conflicts and suffering, the Yugoslav communists applied the model of their colleagues from the Soviet Union: they abolished the state status of all religious holidays.
The national national holiday, that is, the holiday of all denominations, became the New Year. They gave her three non-working days, decorating the Christmas tree, exchanging gifts, roasting a pig and cake and other customs related to the celebration of Christmas. The obligation of all schools was to organize a New Year's event, the program of which would be cleansed of the influence of mystical and symbolic rituals related to Christmas.
The celebration of Christmas, like other religious holidays, was not officially forbidden, but it was inappropriate. In family albums, it is not uncommon to see photos with a hole in the place where the Christmas tree, or the celebratory cake, was seen.
Sociologists and historians do not deny the possibility that the decision of the Yugoslav authorities to abolish religious holidays, as well as similar restrictions, had the opposite effect than the desired one.
S.Ć./Jutarnji list/AFP
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