How Communism Tried to Eradicate Christmas—and Could in America by LIBERTY COUNSEL for Charisma News
This Christmas season when the Biden administration is desperately trying to control Americans by denying their religious beliefs and forcing them to inject experimental shots into their bodies, it is important to examine how communism can quickly eradicate the Christian faith in a nation.
Before Ronald Reagan became president in 1981, he gave more than 1,000 daily radio broadcasts from 1975 to 1979, including one in which he shared a story about the history of Christmas in the Ukraine before and after communism.
In an effort to resist Christians, communist leaders secularized a favorite Ukrainian Christmas carol, “Nova Radist Stala” (“Joyous News Has Come to Us”). The original song began with these words: “The joyous news has come which never was before/ Over a cave above a manger a bright star has lit the world/ where Jesus was born from a virgin maiden.”
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Communists feared the public outcry that would follow a complete ban on Christmas, so they began to slowly secularize the holiday. The first rewrite of the song began: “The joyous news has come which never was before/ a red star with five tails has brightly lit the world.” The second rewrite went further: “The joyous news has come which never was before/ Long-awaited star of freedom lit the skies in October [the month of the Revolution]/ Where formerly lived the kings and had the roots their nobles/ there today with simple folks, Lenin’s glory hovers.”
The former Soviet Union eventually began banning Christmas commemorations. St. Nicholas was replaced with “Did Moroz,” or “Grandfather Frost.” This Stalinist creation wears a red cap and long white beard of Santa Claus, but he delivers gifts to children on New Year’s Eve. Christmas trees were also banned, but people continued to trim their New Year’s trees. Communism folded all Christmas celebrations into a New Year’s celebration.
Christians in the former Soviet Union exhibited bravery and courage in confronting communism’s anti-Christmas campaign. One person recalled how the young people would go out in the streets and sing Christmas carols, knowing that if police heard them, they would be arrested. In communist Romania, Rev. Geza Palffy, a Roman Catholic priest, delivered a sermon in 1983 protesting that Dec. 25 had been declared a workday instead of a holiday. The next day he was arrested by secret police, beaten, imprisoned and died. Inside and outside the Iron Curtain, Ukrainians never stopped singing: “We beg you our Lord, we pray to you today/ Grant us freedom, return glory to our Mother Ukraine.”
