As certain as Christmas is this week, there is strife in France over the festival of peace. The trigger is the Jesus nativity scenes in many town halls.
Dec 24, 2025, 09:57Dec 24, 2025, 09:57
Stefan Brändle, Paris / ch media
A strange parade took place last Thursday in the Paris suburb of Asnières-sur-Seine (92,000 inhabitants). The wooden figures that represent the original scene of Christianity – Mary and Joseph, the three wise men, donkeys and shepherds and of course the cradle with the baby Jesus – left the town hall on Thursday and found their new (rain-protected) place a few meters further, on the front steps. “At the top of the stairs,” as the conservative mayor of Asnières, Manuel Aeschlimann, emphasized.
In France, nativity figures don’t find a place to stay so easily either.Image: getty images
Asnières is just the latest scene in an old dispute. It broke out in 2010 when France imposed a ban on the burqa. The French Human Rights League saw this as a “stigmatization” of Muslim women and launched a counterattack: It accused several right-wing governed places of violating the separation of church and state and the religious neutrality of the authorities when they set up nativity scenes in public buildings; Jews, Muslims or atheists could feel excluded and discriminated against as a result.
Since then, almost every local nativity scene affair has ended in court. The judges often seem overwhelmed: Christmas tradition stands against the less sacrosanct secularity and neutrality of the republic.
The verdicts are very different. In the case of Beaucaire (southern France), a first instance court ruled in favor of the free thinkers. However, the right-wing populist mayor Nelson Chaudon refused to dismantle the nativity scene. He was fined 120,000 euros at the beginning of the year.
That’s a lot of money for a smaller community. In order to avoid conviction, Mayor Aeschlimann moved the nativity scene in front of the town hall in Asnières. In doing so, he follows the form – even if very subtle – of non-religion “in” public buildings.
Laurent Wauquiez is a member of the French Parliament.Image: keystone
His conservative party colleague Laurent Wauquiez, who had exhibited a nativity scene in the Lyon regional council, resorted to another trick to avoid conviction: he surrounded the Jesus nativity scene with an exhibition about the traditional craft of carved wooden figures, the “santons”.
The Council of State, as the highest administrative authority in France, allowed this flimsy “exhibition” to pass. In the southern French city of Béziers, a stronghold of nativity scene supporters, mayor Robert Ménard won against complaints from communists and other left-wing extremists by simply citing “common sense”.
The freethinkers and secularists rely on the anti-clerical tradition of secularism that goes back to Voltaire, which culminated in the separation of church and state in 1905 after centuries of bloody religious wars. Precisely because it remains controversial, if not fragile, the Human Rights League systematically files lawsuits against every town hall nativity scene. (aargauerzeitung.ch)
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