I know it's not even December yet but I found this article and it's just too good to turn up:
From the article:
The Nazi Party tried their best to remove Christ from Christmas by
paganising carols, producing glittering swastika, iron cross and toy grenade
baubles for the fir tree, research for a new exhibition has found.
Many of the changes made under Hitler, put in place to remove the
influence of the Jewish-born baby Jesus, are still in use today, much to the
alarm of modern Germans.
The swastika-shaped baking trays and wrapping paper adorned with
Nazi symbols have long gone, but traces of the Third Reich Christmas can still
be found in the subtly rewritten lyrics of favourite carols.
The discoveries have been highlighted by a new exhibition at the National
Socialism Documentation Centre in Cologne.
The Nazi version, which removed the religious references and replaced
them with images of snowy fields, remains in some song books and is sung in many households. The same goes for carols referring to Virgin Birth and lullabies
that invoke the Baby Jesus.
The Nazis, perpetrators of some of the worst atrocities of the twentieth century and epitomes of evil, tried to secularise a Christian holiday (but, really, isn't Christmas rather universal in some ways?) to make it more palatable for the current political environment.
That sounds familiar.
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