The Ministry of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Cortes has wished Merry Christmas to the “Christian community” on the occasion of the birth of Jesus. The formula is not innocent. Nor casual. It is striking, first of all, that the Government refers to Christians as if they were just another community, almost a cultural minority, in a country whose history, identity, and calendar continue to be decisively marked by Christianity.
Spain is not a sum of equivalent “religious communities.” It is a nation shaped over centuries by the Christian faith, with a cultural, legal, and moral tradition inseparable from the Gospel. Reducing Christians to a “community” is a subtle way of downgrading them to the status of a particular group, tolerated but peripheral.
A language that reveals a vision
The official message congratulates the “Christian community” on the birth of Jesus, presented as a “moment to share wishes of peace, joy, and well-being for all.” Nothing more. Jesus appears stripped of his divine identity and redemptive mission. He is not the Son of God made man, but an amiable pretext for a generic and politically correct message.
But the most significant thing is the framework from which it is spoken: Christianity not as the living root of the nation, but as a particular sensitivity, comparable to any other, integrated into a mosaic of minorities.
From majority faith to tolerated folklore
This way of expressing oneself is not a simple semantic error. It responds to a concrete conception of public space: Christianity can be recognized as long as it accepts being just one more, as long as it renounces any claim to universal truth and limits itself to the emotional, the cultural, or the folkloric.
The “Christian community” can be symbolically celebrated, but not taken into account when it defends life, the family, or natural law. It can be invoked at Christmas, but ignored the rest of the year.
A greeting that is also an amendment
It is especially striking that this greeting comes from a Government that systematically legislates against fundamental moral principles of Christianity and that has promoted its progressive expulsion from public space. The same power that marginalizes faith now arrogates to itself the ability to define what Christmas is and how it should be understood.
Christmas does not belong to a “community”
Christmas does not belong to a “Christian community” understood as a sociological minority. It is an event that has shaped the history of Spain and Europe. And Jesus is not a neutral symbol for collective well-being, but the center of the faith that has shaped our civilization.
Speaking of “Christian community” is not a gesture of respect, but a form of reduction. An “elegant” way of telling the historical majority to behave as if it were just another minority.
The Church is not called to accept that framework, but to remind those in power—even at Christmas—that Christ is not the patrimony of any ministry, nor does he fit into ideological language. But rather, he was born in a stable in Bethlehem for our salvation.