Donato Trovarelli doesn’t celebrate Christmas.
The charismatic Christian author from Pescara, Italy, rejects the holiday and all its trappings. To him, the traditions and celebrations associated with the birth of Jesus are actually antithetical to his faith. They have nothing to do with Jesus. They’re just empty rituals.
He’s not alone in hating the holiday. Many evangelicals in Italy are staunchly opposed to Christmas.
“We drive out of our places of worship all the traditions of the tree, the Nativity scene, the figure of Santa Claus, Jesus as a child, and every other popular tradition,” Trovarelli said.
For the Italian Christians who identify as born again, rejecting Christmas is a way to distinguish them from Catholics. They assert their identity through opposition to the status quo.
According to a 2023 survey by Ipsos, more than 60 percent of Italians say they are Catholic. Just 4 percent identify as Protestant, with another 3 percent identifying as “other Christian.” Some say the evangelical community in Italy is probably just 1 percent of the population.
For that religious minority, their Christian identity has been largely defined not by who they are but by who they are not. They are not Roman Catholic, not theologically liberal, not culturally secular.
“In such a situation, evangelicals feel a need to better assert their identity based on core gospel essentials rather than on cultural features,” J. D. Gilmore, a church planter in Palermo and coordinator of Impatto (Acts 29 in Italy), told CT. “Any kind of traditional religious festivity is usually abhorred by evangelicals in Italy.”
Some younger evangelicals are not so opposed to the holiday, according to Gilmore. He celebrates it, personally, finding significant value in “its warmth, its focus on time with family, and the chance it gives Christians in Italy to celebrate with our neighbors.” But he knows older generations often view the acceptance of Christmas traditions as a betrayal.
“Any of us who give a hint of accepting the validity and value of Christmas are regarded as quite liberal,” Gilmore said, “and not evangelical.”
For Vincenzo Russo, an evangelical in Naples, there are two big issues with Christmas celebrations. The first is that it invites hypocrisy. People pretend to be devoted Christians who care a lot about Christ’s birth, when they really don’t.
“Many people use this period as a pretext to give a polish to their religiosity, to dust off their Christian uniform,” he said. “It’s a good opportunity to get on stage and act out, once a year, the good part.”
The second is that the traditions and celebrations are not biblical.
“Let’s ask ourselves, is this something that God likes?” Russo said. “Or is it maybe because they like to binge on panettone and swallow rivers of sparkling wine and get moved by hearing the bagpipe-playing shepherds (zampognari)?”
Opposition to Christmas is enough of a hallmark among Italian evangelicalism that many websites for churches around the country address the question, Gli evangelici festeggiano il Natale e le Pasqua? (Do evangelicals celebrate Christmas and Easter?) The short answer is no.
The slightly longer answer on the website of the Chiesa Cristiana Evangelica Pentecostale ADI de Parma (Christian Evangelical Pentecostal Church of Parma), in northern Italy, takes a whole page. The church explains to potential visitors that it does not “recognize the liturgical feast of the nativity of Jesus.” It points out that the date of Jesus’ birth is not mentioned in the Bible and that modern traditions, including the Christmas tree and live Nativities, cannot be found in Scripture either. According to the website, the church’s rejection of the holiday is “objectively the result of our consistent adherence to the Gospel.”
Italian evangelicals are not the first Christians to oppose Christmas, according to historian Gerry Bowler, author of Christmas in the Crosshairs: Two Thousand Years of Denouncing and Defending the World’s Most Celebrated Holiday. In fact, a war on Christmas is itself a Christmas tradition.
Christians in the first and second centuries debated whether the Nativity should be celebrated, Bowler said, and early Gnostics challenged the notion of the Incarnation, arguing that Jesus did not have a physical body. Since then, everyone from Catholics to Puritans to Jehovah’s Witnesses to Oneness Pentecostals have denounced the accretion of “non-Christian” elements, deeming the holiday idolatrous and unbiblical.
“There have been all kinds of battles being fought around Christmas, both within and outside Christianity,” Bowler said. “And despite their particular objections, these Italians fit within a broad stream of believers who have objected to Christmas celebrations for one reason or another.”
Evangelical expats in Italy are often surprised to discover their fellow believers’ antipathy toward Christmas. Jess Cowell, who serves with the Church Missionary Society in Bari along with her husband, Simon, said it took some time to adjust.
“At first we found it really bizarre,” said Cowell, who is from Australia.
Evangelicals invited her to something called a “Tuesday lunch” held on December 25, but with no references to Christmas at all. The gathering was completely “de-Christmasized,” she said. Cowell learned that some of her friends would pull their children out of school to keep them from participating in a pageant.
Slowly, Cowell has come to appreciate the Italian evangelical approach to the season.
“It is to clearly say, ‘We are not the same,’ to prompt a question and provoke a conversation,” she said.
Cowell and her family still celebrate in their home, but they’ve also worked to “reinvent” the holiday and think about how it can be more intentionally evangelistic. She feels her Italian brothers and sisters have pointed out a “blind spot” that she and maybe many other evangelicals have had when it comes to Christmas.
“There’s a danger in not teaching the Good News, the gift, of Jesus coming as a baby,” she said.
For other evangelicals living in Italy, the evangelistic opportunities of Christmas outweigh any concerns about association with Catholicism and cultural practices not found in Scripture.
René Breuel, a Brazilian missionary, decided to embrace Christmas when he planted Hopera church in Rome in 2012. Now, Breuel and his team dedicate two or three services to Christmas, have special performances and songs for the kids in their community, and host a special Christmas party with games and crafts. Church members make Christmas decorations to give to friends and neighbors.
Breuel said he appreciates why other evangelicals in Italy might object to Christmas celebrations. But for him, the only real question is whether it’s an opportunity for more outreach.
“For us, to celebrate Christmas is uncontroversial,” he said.
He has noticed, though, that the Christmas celebrations have been especially effective at bringing in Italian evangelicals who are committed to their faith but also want to join in the season’s festivities.
“They appreciate the permission we give them to celebrate,” Breuel said. “They discover a church that embraces it, and they don’t have to feel guilty if they like Christmas, because we do too.”
