The Ecclesiastical Front in the War on Christmas

A suburban Boston Catholic parish ignited a controversy this Advent when its outdoor Nativity scene replaced the figure of the Baby Jesus in His crib with a sign, “ICE was here.”  The pastor contends the display moves “beyond static traditional figures and evoke[s] emotion and dialogue.”

A new battlefront is emerging in the “War on Christmas.”  For years, the “war on Christmas” was primarily a confrontation with encroaching secularism: many Americans’ first encounter with the “naked public square” was the city hall park from which the traditional Nativity scene had been evicted, usually by court order.  As wokeness spread, “Happy Holidays” became the euphemism for the holiday that dared not speak its name.

But the “War on Christmas” seems to have taken on a new frontline: Christians wanting to co-opt Christian symbolism as agitprop for political causes.  The 2025 cause célèbre is immigration law enforcement.

News reports confirm that using crèches as partisan props is not limited to Massachusetts.  In Illinois, one Nativity scene apparently features a Baby Jesus whose hands are zip-tied, the detention tactic used by ICE.  Another has Jesus in a gas mask, an allusion to tactics used to disperse those illegally obstructing federal law enforcement activities.

As is typical of many controversies today, we’re being presented with the claim that there are two sides to the question. Critics of the actions call it sacrilegious, using religious symbols for ideological purposes. Its defenders call it adapting the Gospel message to contemporary issues, causing people to grapple with applying Jesus’s teachings to the times.

But there’s a limit to this perspectivism. In Fiddler on the Roof, every time Tevye’s daughters challenge him with some new issue, he’s depicted mulling things over in his head.  “’On the one hand….’  ‘On the other hand….’  ‘On the other other hand ….’”  But, at a certain point, when Chava marries outside the faith, he raises his arms in a powerful gesture and shouts, “’No!  There is no other hand!”

Suburban Boston and other Catholic venues in this fair land need a Tevye.

A manger scene – especially one in public – has one purpose: to give visible public witness to the truth of Christ’s Incarnation: the Son of God made man.  That is the purpose of every crèche scene.  Anything that gets in the way of that message – whether by displacing, diluting, or distracting from it – does not belong there.

Certain brands of “political Catholics” – especially those prone to “accompanying” the Zeitgeist – appear afflicted by a peculiar form of ecclesiastical navel-gazing.  They seem to forget that no small part of the world does not share their faith in God, much less in Christ, and even less in their political caricature of Christ.

In many Western societies, God, for increasing numbers of people, is as fictional as Santa Claus.  Pope Leo warned against a “neo-Arianism” that accentuates Jesus as a great humanistic, ethical teacher, or prophet – maybe even poster boy for political causes, but one who gets tongue-tied in professing his divinity.

When that is the way of the world, Catholics who overlay the clarity of that religious message with others – including messages they perhaps deem “religious,” but are arguably subordinate – compromise the Gospel.  Such gestures divide the Church.

Press coverage sometimes suggests as much, noting how Catholics are visiting the South Dedham manger scene to “take sides” about it.  No Catholic should have to “take sides” in front of a Nativity scene.  No Catholic viewing it should have to confess any political profession alongside his profession of faith.

If he does, there’s something gravely wrong there.  This is not a denial of the Church’s social teaching or corporal works of mercy, but a defense of the integrity of Catholic devotional symbolism.

The last two pontificates attached a premium to “ecclesial unity,” which has primarily meant suppressing any manifestations of sympathy for the traditional Latin Mass.  What about politicized manger scenes that divide Catholics who should come to them to pray?

The Archdiocese of Boston is said to have told the pastor to change his Nativity scene, but he has so far refused, calling for “dialogue” while the chancery has as of yet done nothing.

Pardon me if I dismiss his appeal to “dialogue.”  And from examples elsewhere, we know that bishops can make things happen when they want to. 

There’s an old Latin adage apropos to this case: extrema se tangunt, “extreme opposites meet.” Secularists would banish Nativity scenes from public visibility because they believe religion has no place in public political life.  The “ecclesiastical front” crowd in the War on Christmas paradoxically attaches a similar primacy to politics by using religious symbols to push a partisan agenda on the public.

What’s missing in both cases is letting religion be religion in its purest sense, absent any political alloy.  A Nativity scene is not an argument; it is a proclamation.