Italy: Legislation aims to punish teachers who ban Nativity scenes: ‘Attack on the deepest values’

Rome: A bill introduced in the Italian Senate this week by members of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s political party would punish teachers in the country who ban Nativity scenes in an attempt to keep from offending non-Christians.

Members of the Brothers of Italy party proposed a draft law that would subject school leaders to fines or other disciplinary measures if they remove Nativity scenes regardless of whether parents or students request it, according to The Times of London.

The bill, which was introduced by Italian Sen. Lavinia Mennuni, stipulates that banning Nativity displays in Italian schools “discriminates” against Roman Catholics and represents “an attack on the deepest values and traditions of our people.”

Mennuni said that for years, she has witnessed “embarrassing and unacceptable decisions by some schools to ban Nativity scenes, or to turn Christmas into an improbable winter festival to avoid giving offense to practitioners of other religions.”

She maintained that the law “is absolutely essential to safeguard and protect [Italy’s] cultural roots, which are exemplified by the Nativity scene,” according to The Guardian.

The bill slams attempts to rebrand Christmas as a nonsectarian winter festival, which it described as “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.”

The proposed law was met with pushback from some people who accused Meloni and the Brothers of Italy party of weaponizing religion for political purposes.

“Punctual as a Swiss clock, during Christmas, the right-wing proposals to safeguard Italian Christian traditions return,” said Riccardo Magi, who serves as secretary of the progressive Più Europa party.

Meloni, an outspoken Roman Catholic, was elected in 2022 on a platform of defending Italy’s traditional culture and national identity amid a centralized European government and a surge of illegal immigration.

Invoking the Holy Family to buttress his point, Magi claimed the proposed law is laden with “hypocrisy, bordering on blasphemy,” and framed it in the context of Meloni’s allegedly anti-immigrant policies.

“[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 center, maybe in Albania, waiting to find out from some judge in Italy whether or not they are worthy of setting foot on Italian territory,” Magi said.

Last month, Meloni’s government reached a deal with Albania to build two centers by next spring to house up to 3,000 of the many asylum seekers attempting to come into Italy while they await their processing.

Veronica Migani, who serves as head teacher at a school in Bergamo, implied the bill is unnecessary and that she has not encountered any controversy over Nativity scenes, despite having an ethnically diverse student body.

“We have never had problems — in our school we have a Christmas tree, crucifixes and no one has ever had a problem,” she asserted. “We also respect Ramadan.”

Antonello Giannelli, who is a member of Italy’s association of head teachers, also criticized the bill, saying, “Anything related to the culture of a country and its religion cannot be imposed by law.”