By Paul Angel
It’s Advent time across the Christian world. As a kid, I always loved this time of year. Being the youngest, I was given the honor of lighting the candles on the Advent Yule log, one week at a time, until Christmas Eve. In my family, we didn’t have an Advent wreath but instead placed white candles in bored-out holes in a thick, four-foot long limb my father had cut off a hemlock tree in the backyard. Every year, we placed it on the mantle piece, tucking holly, pine boughs and live hemlock sprigs around its base. My wife laughs at me today when she sees the smile on my face when I drag that old log out of its hiding place in the garage more than 60 years later.
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Another longstanding Advent tradition is the Christmas market. In many European nations, including Germany, Austria, and France, they are referred to as Christkindlmarkts (Christ child markets) because, depending on local custom, it is the Christ child, not jolly old St. Nicholas, who is the bearer of Christmas gifts.
But almost anywhere you go in Europe, these festive markets will pop up during Advent. There, attendees can purchase handmade Christmas tree ornaments, salted meats and local cheeses, fortified wines, fruitcakes, candied almonds, roasted chestnuts, foot-long frankfurters, and more.
They are inviting places where people gather to laugh, chat, eat, and express good will, enjoying the kind of Christian comaraderie lacking much of the rest of the year.
Unfortunately, they have also become an inviting target for those wishing to terrorize and/or kill Christians.
Thus a sad story I read the other day. In many large and small cities in Germany, the dangers and security costs of Christmas markets are making it next to impossible for market organizers to continue their centuries-old tradition, one that has been going on since Frederick II okayed the first Striezelmarkt in Dresden in 1434.
For instance, in the cities of Overeth and Kerpen, the organizers of the Christmas markets were forced to haggle with the town councils about who would be chipping in for security against possible terror attacks.
After a year and a half of discussions, the city councils lamely alleged they could not provide the necessary security due to the expense. Costs included erecting a ring of concrete “Jersey walls,” around the various markets, providing security cameras, and paying some armed guards to patrol the dense crowds of revelers.
Without city financial help to pick up these costs, many of the market organizers faced bankruptcy and were thus forced to cancel their markets.
According to The Christian Post, even the city of Dresden was forced to cut back the number of Christmas markets due to “lack of funds” and “security concerns.” Their security concerns are not, however, unfounded:
Berlin 2016: A Muslim man in a 40-ton truck drove through the Breitscheidplatz Christmas market, killing 12 and injuring 56.
Essen 2017: Six Syrian nationals were arrested on suspicion of planning an attack on a Christmas market.
Leverkusen 2023: Authorities uncovered a plot by two radicalized Muslims to ram a vehicle with explosives into the local Christmas market.
Magdeburg 2024: A Saudi doctor plowed his car through a Kindl market leaving six dead and 338 wounded.
Sadly, France has reported a similar story. According to the Post, the Christmas market in Strausbourg has been targeted multiple times:
In 2018, an ISIS-inspired attacker killed five people and injured 11 others. This year’s planning has already been roiled by news of a car attack in early November on Oléron, where a driver shouting “Allahu Akbar” plowed into 10 pedestrians, injuring them.
Whether you are an atheist or not, you have to admit that Western civilization is inextricably bound with Christianity. For centuries, our greatest architectural works, paintings, metalworks, literary works, music etc, were created by and for Christians.
But, if you are a politically correct German elected official, you hide the truth, refuse to give a name to the threat, and coddle the perpetrators.
According the Post:
In May 2024, Marie-Thérèse Kaiser was convicted of incitement and fined for posting statistics that showed migrants were disproportionately committing sexual assault against young German girls. In another instance, a 20-year-old German woman was jailed after “defaming” a migrant who had been convicted with eight others of gang-raping a 15-year-old girl.
Concerned they might rile up the rising Muslim population, German politicians instead simply refuse to pick up the security costs for the Christmas markets while finding enough spare cash ($34.6 billion) for non-Christian refugees and asylum seekers.
These spineless, politically correct leaders have abandoned the very faith that made Europe what it once was: the jewel of the Western world.
On Dec. 13, many Christians celebrate the feast of St. Lucia. According to the Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine, written about 1059, Lucia was a wealthy Roman Christian who was forced to marry a pagan man by her mother. Her Roman husband reported her as a Christian (a crime punishable by death) to the governor of Syracuse after she expressed a desire to donate her significant dowry to the poor. The governor then demanded she make a sacrifice to the emperor and to renounce her faith. She refused.
In retaliation, he ordered her to be defiled in a brothel. When Roman soldiers arrived to seize her, according to the story, she could not be moved from her spot, nor could faggots placed at her feet be lit. Finally, the Romans tortured her by gouging out her eyes. The death blow was then administered with a sword through the throat.
Today, it is gutless Christian leaders who are blind. Had they a drop of the conviction of St. Lucia, we would not have to worry about the future of Christian Europe. Unfortunately, this is not the case and, thus, Europe may be doomed to fall to religious zealots and an army of migrants, the death blow this time administered by our own brothers and sisters.
Paul Angel is the managing editor of American Free Press. He can be reached at Paul@AmericanFreePress.net.
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