While December is always a month for Christians worldwide to celebrate the birth of our Saviour, too often something arises to put a damper on the season.

This year, the City of Kelowna in British Columbia leads the way, as bureaucratic Grinch’s have stepped in to — get this — force the Knights of Columbus to remove a sign reading “Keep Christ in Christmas” from the city’s downtown Nativity scene. Criticism from the usual suspects brought to attention that this is just too Christian for their liking.

Can no one see the irony? On this, the celebration of one of the most holy days on the Christian calendar, bureaucrats deem a sign on a Nativity scene celebrating the birth of Christ to be too Christian. Leave it to Advocacy Canada’s president Wilbur Turner to sum up the thinking behind this opposition when he responded to Conservative MLA Kristina Loewen expressing disgust at the sign’s removal: “It concerns me that she would be making these kinds of statements.”

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Then there was Pattison Advertising, banning a pro-life billboard from a Manitoba pro-life group, saying it creates too much controversy. A similar situation in Hamilton, Ont., saw the courts uphold that city’s right to bar the Christian Heritage Party’s pro-life advertising on city buses.

Too often in the pages of The Catholic Register this year, two words have stood out in the hundreds of stories we’ve published: Christian persecution. For us in Canada, perhaps it is a subtle persecution. Remembrance Day and the orders from above that chaplains must tone down any mention of God or overtly religious (translation: Christian) readings. The quest for justice on the nearly 100 burned churches in the wake of still unproven discoveries of dead children in unmarked graves at Indian residential schools (despite millions of taxpayer dollars being spent to find these graves). The list goes on.

Christianity, long thought to be under attack only abroad — so well documented, in Armenia, the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere throughout the year by Register Ottawa Correspondent Susan Korah — is now directly in the sites of those who worship at the altar of secularism in our home and native land. 

In recent weeks alone, we have seen Quebec Premier Francois Legault declare his government is launching an all-out war on prayer in public. Ostensibly, Legault’s target is “Islamists” in our midst, he says. He wants to “send a clear message to Islamists” that his CAQ “will fight for the fundamental values we have in Quebec.” Make no mistake however. A ban on prayer, Islamist or not, is a ban on all prayer. For decades, Christians have taken to the streets for a re-enactment of Christ’s Passion on Good Friday. Such a law would make the annual event a clear conflict with Quebec’s ever-growing secularists state. 

And it is not just Legault and the CAQ. Federally, Bloc Québécois MPs have tabled multiple bills in the House of Commons calling for a repeal of religious speech protections.

Could, however, there be a change in the offing? As all this goes down, there has been reason to celebrate Christianity in a number of Canadian municipalities. In this month in which we celebrate the birth of Jesus more than 30 Canadian municipalities, including Toronto, marked Christian Heritage Month. It may get lost in that pretty well every day, week, month or year is commemorated for one cause, religion or any myriad reason, but in an ever-increasingly secular society (and man how I get tired of writing that over and over), it is somewhat of a breakthrough. 

A faith that has been demeaned by so many “enlightened” folks — in many cases, the same people cheering on the diabolical pro-Hamas crowds calling for a real genocide unlike the phony one they say is already occurring across Gaza — has finally been given a stamp of approval. 

Sure, there is recognition, a photo op with a few nice words uttered, a fancy certificate of proclamation and the satisfaction such acknowledgment brings (and thanks so much to Jay and Molly Banerjei for leading the campaign nationwide). But can we really celebrate? Well, maybe.

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Conservative MP Jamil Jivani is taking steps to protect Canada’s Christians. He has launched a petition, authored by concerned citizens in Durham Region east of Toronto, to protect Christians in Canada (protectchristianscanada.com) which he plans to present in the House of Commons in February (if the government hasn’t fallen by then, but more on that later).

“I’m sounding the alarm,” the Durham MP announced in an X post. “We must protect Christians in Canada from governments and corporations abusing their power in our country, and from anti-Christian bigotry.”

It’s a small step, but still a step forward. Perhaps small steps are needed before the giant leap. After all, the Catholic Civil Rights League took a similar small step a few years back, launching its church attacks database to tabulate attacks on Christian churches.

Of course, when looking back on the previous year, one can’t overlook our American brethren and the constant political turmoil that will see Trump 2.0 re-enter the White House as the next President of the United States. Love him or hate him, everyone has an opinion on Donald Trump, the person and the politician. The person definitely gets poor marks, but the politician? Well, he wouldn’t be taking the reins if his policies didn’t resonate with Americans. And this, perhaps, is where Christians can rejoice as well. He has not been shy, despite his own shall we say erratic moral values, from pumping up the volume on a return to a past America, where values stood for something. And it is something Americans seem to have taken to heart.

Which brings us to our own political follies and the end-of-year histrionics in Ottawa. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appears to be barely hanging on — at the time of this writing, Trudeau remained in power — as Opposition parties cry for an election and an outright revolt within Liberal ranks laying just below the surface following the PM’s amateur hour sacking of Chrystia Freeland from her finance minister role. No sympathies to Freeland however, who was as much a source of the problems arising from an out of touch Liberal Party that has been a leading proponent in pushing Christian values into the background.

For many Catholics, they can only wait to see the end of a ruling party with which they have been at such odds, in so many areas, as this one. From making abortion a pillar of its policies — even having the nerve to constantly bray about it being a Charter right (Earth to Liberals, it’s not!) — to shirking its responsibilities for Indian residential schools and laying all blame at the feet of religious who operated these schools on behalf of the federal government, from a Prime Minister “understanding” attacks on churches to the aforementioned attempts to remove prayer from Remembrance Day ceremonies, so many will be glad to see it go.

As for the Catholic Church as a whole, October brought a close to the Synod on Synodality, but opened the doors to a new chapter in the Church, one recognizing the “equal dignity of all the baptized” in offering something to the mission of proclaiming salvation in Christ. As it moves forward, no one will be left behind in shaping the Church’s future, delegates declared.

For Canadian Catholics, especially those in Toronto and Montreal, the year ended with nothing but joy as they celebrated the elevation of Archbishop Francis Leo to the College of Cardinals Dec. 7. Friends, family and hundreds of well-wishers from the Archdiocese and his native Montreal were on hand to help the 53-year-old Leo celebrate this momentous occasion, perhaps none so happy as the new Cardinal’s father, Francesco. It led this son of Italy back to the homeland he has not seen since the 1950s when he emigrated to Canada and welcomed a new generation of Leos in a new land. 

As we say our farewell to 2024, Catholics can only look ahead as we enter into this year of Jubilee. Pope Francis has called on Catholics to focus their Holy Year 2025 pilgrimages on Jesus Christ, the path and destination for Christian hope. In fact, hope will be the theme of Francis’ weekly catechesis throughout the Jubilee year, which launched Christmas Eve with the opening of the Holy Door in St. Peter’s Basilica.  

Pope Francis has called on all nations to eliminate the death penalty, to divert a percentage of arms spending to a global fund to fight hunger and climate change and to cancel the international debt of developing nations as concrete ways to usher in this new era of hope.

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"Sporadic acts of philanthropy are not enough. Cultural and structural changes are necessary, so that enduring change may come about," the Pope said in his message ahead of the Jan. 1 commemoration of World Peace Day 2025. 

Hope, indeed. As we head into this new year, we can only hope, as the Pope has called for tirelessly, the end of wars, in the Mideast, Ukraine, across Africa and elsewhere. And for an end to persecution, all persecution, not just of Christians.