Revolutionary totalitarian regimes have long attempted to make Christmas disappear, or to at least make Christmas into something more to the state’s liking.

The earliest example of this can found with the French revolutionaries. Shortly after the First French Republic was established in 1792, the state imposed a new calendar which established a year of twelve 30-day months divided into three 10-day weeks. This new calendar, which was explicitly anti-Christian, abolished all Christian holidays and saint days and replaced them with days commemorating agricultural tools, trees, grains, and minerals. In revolutionary France, especially during the years of the Terror, from 1793 to 1794, “most of the clergy [was] in hiding, and all of the churches [were] closed.”1 Needless to say, during this period, few celebrated Christmas openly, and Christmas generally disappeared from public view until Bonaparte’s coup in 1799…….

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.