The Portuguese Left’s Attempts To Cancel Christmas Show Wokery Is Still Far from Dead

The Right has, understandably, been in a joyous mood as of late. Populism is on the rise almost everywhere across the West; Trump’s return to power, almost a year ago, put an end to the notion that wokery had come to stay, that it could not be reverted, and that conservatives would sooner or later have to come to terms with it. We now know that collective neurosis can, indeed, be led to collapse under the weight of its own absurdities—if only those of us who are sensible and patient enough have the energy for the fight. But triumphalism is a dangerous false friend, as the events surrounding the quiet cancellation of Christmas in Portugal have come to show.

When government-rule schools decide, without consultation with parents, to purge all Christmas imagery from class photographs in the name of ‘inclusion,’ the problem is far larger—and politically more relevant—than a mere forgettable bureaucratic misstep. That was what happened in Pinhal Novo, where a number of government schools decided to simply erase any Christmas-related symbolism from their premises with the argument that Christmas might offend immigrant minorities living in the country. They did so by preventing children from having class photographs taken with anything that might be related to the festive occasion. Instead, the pupils were forced to do them in sanitised sets with a blackboard, a globe, and a pencil. Not much fun, really.

This was the practical expression of an ideological worldview that has learned to disguise itself as neutrality. Now on the defensive, the Left no longer wages open war against tradition; it empties it of content and presents the void as moral progress. Proclaiming head-on the urgency of immolating native religion and national culture seems a tad too much in the era of Trump and Meloni, but how about pretending it is not self-erasure we’re engaged in, but an act of enlightened compassion and benevolent hospitality? For that, indeed, there might yet be narrative room—so much so, indeed, that those responsible for the shameful decision haven’t even found themselves forced to apologise for the incident.

That no one must feel ‘excluded’ is the familiar justification. Yet this abstract concern is never grounded in any concrete complaint. No parents, whether native-born but irreligious Portuguese or those of immigrant backgrounds, are actually known to have felt offended. No minority mobilised against Christmas. There were no demands for a great purge of Christmas decorations and symbology from any group. Instead, a hypothetical sensibility was elevated above lived reality, and on its altar, a real, shared cultural practice was sacrificed. The result wasn’t inclusion, but denial. It wasn’t tolerance or anything resembling it, but ugly, naked cultural self-censorship.

Portugal is a profoundly Catholic country. It is the nation that Christianised half the world, from Nagasaki to Brazil. Christmas, in Portugal, is not merely a religious observance. It is a marker of civilisation—the language of memory, ritual, and belonging that grounds the shared existence of the Portuguese people. An attack on Christmas, therefore, is an attack on the nation itself. When schools remove Christmas symbols, they are not making space for diversity; they are signalling that the majority’s culture is unworthy of being observed or continued. They are saying that they want to abolish it altogether.

For these latter-day disciples of wokery, diversity ought to include everything, indeed—every habit, no matter how harmful; every belief, no matter how silly or foreign; every tradition, no matter how meaningless or, in Portugal’s specific national context, artificial. Everyone is to be invited to the grand table of diversity, except one despised guest—ourselves. Everything is permitted in the public square—except historical continuity. Every identity must be affirmed—except the one that already exists. 

This latest episode follows a well-known script. It begins with a supposedly technocratic decision, taken behind closed doors. Then, the opportunistic moral framing, with critics accused of intolerance, backwardness, or latent extremism. Finally, following public outcry, the self-serving attempt at damage control. The issue, however, is not whether or not schoolchildren were forbidden from posing with Christmas decorations for their class photos. It is the poisonous worldview that made this sanitisation seem reasonable and virtuous in the first place.

Under the previous left-wing government of António Costa, now the lame duck President of the European Council, the same logic reshaped language, curricula, and public broadcasting. This largely continues to this day, despite a flurry of promises from the new, faux conservative, EPP-aligned executive of Prime Minister Luís Montenegro. Gender ideology is introduced to children as settled science. Recently, the state television broadcaster RTP, a known bastion of the far left largely impervious to democratic control, caused a national scandal after running a series of repugnant cartoons for schoolchildren. The programme, named “Sex Symbols,” praised transsexuality to school-age children. On their official educational website for kids and youngsters, RTP still writes in no uncertain terms: “Today, it is known that biological sex does not determine gender, just as gender does not determine sexual orientation. … The process of [sex change] is broad. Cláudio may become Cláudia and Joana might become João, but what there is to alter might include voice, haircut, body and changing the sex itself.” These are the things the Portuguese taxpayer is still being forced to finance after almost two years of a so-called ‘centre-right’ government.

Defenders of these measures insist this is not about ideology. That claim is perhaps the most ideological of all. Only a movement deeply convinced of its own moral superiority could believe that stripping symbols, renaming traditions, and reengineering childhood education is somehow apolitical. It isn’t. Wokery is trying to survive by presenting itself as common sense—as the only position that does not require justification.

This is about far more than tinsel and carols. It is about the right of a society to recognise itself without apology. Christmas is Portugal itself, and there can be no Portugal without it. If, indeed, there are those to whom this might cause discomfort, they are more than welcome to simply not come.