Few things testify to how bizarre Croatia is, like the fact that for decades the Christmas and New Year tree has been a serious political and identity issue. This has been going on since late socialism, when it was important to know who decorated the tree when, i.e. whether they were doing it before Christmas or before the New Year, so that after the political changes, the latter, who did it before the New Year, bypassing Christmas, almost died out as a species , becoming pariahs like modern Yugoslavs. But as soon as that issue was resolved, thanks to the political opportunism of former communists and atheists, another, equally important politically and identity-wise, opened up. It is a question of who keeps the decorated Christmas tree in the house until when. Because, regardless of the fact that it is not in the spirit of the Catholic tradition, it is vitally important for nationalists and the right to tear down the Christmas tree after the Holy Three Kings, i.e. immediately on the morning of the seventh of January, so as not to miss Orthodox Christmas by accident. Moreover, they always do this demonstratively, visibly leaving half-dried Christmas trees by the container, on the seventh morning. And the obsession goes so far, even if it has subsided a little in recent years, that neighbors who do not do this are looked down upon, and sometimes even loudly accused of being communists and Serbophiles. It is true, admittedly, that some of those who used to decorate the tree for the New Year, and not on Christmas Eve, as an act of civil resistance, now use it to leave the decorated tree even after the seventh of January.
To make matters more bizarre, the matter has even changed rhetorically in public, so almost no one calls it a Christmas tree anymore, despite the fact that it is usually a Christmas tree and not an ornamental pine, because Christmas tree is probably understood as a Serbian term. So that today in Croatia, the public usually talks about the Christmas pine or tree.
Well, the most visible pine, the one on Zagreb's Ban Jelačić Square, has become the site of political debates and right-wing hysteria these days. And that after the Youth Initiative for Human Rights hung decorations on it, which as a rule was used to decorate it with dozens of kitschy hearts, with a couple of simple, conciliatory and activist messages: For Christmas and in 2025, I want the Croatian government stop relativizing the crimes of HVO and HV in Bosnia and Herzegovina and admit that the Croatian military and state leadership participated in a joint criminal enterprise in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 2025, I want convicted war criminals to be stripped of their state decorations. We are not proud of them. For Christmas, I want us to reconcile with Bosniaks and Serbs. For Christmas, I want young people to base their attitude about the war in the 90s not on hatred, but on understanding. For Christmas, I wish that patriotism is not determined solely by where someone was in '91.
This, you guessed it, caused a tsunami of protests from various veterans' associations, portals and right-wing parties. One of the more agile censors in the public, Zorica Gregurić, who leads one such association, with an unimportant name, and the woman who led a political attack on the Croatian Audiovisual Center a little less than ten years ago, with the desire to decide herself which and what kind of films will be shot in Croatia, she reported the Youth Initiative to the State Attorney's Office because "the messages are pure hate speech, they violate the declaration on the Homeland War that was adopted in the Parliament and damage the reputation and honor of the Republic Croatia". The only official reaction to this was the Anti-Fascist League, claiming obviously that all these claims of Zorica Gregurić are complete nonsense, and everything continued with meaningless new messages from the right, which are now unsuccessfully and without effect repeating the performance that alarmed them.
The Youth Initiative for Human Rights, one of the few non-governmental organizations that really upsets the right and does not allow the true nature of the 1990s to be forgotten, has publicly stated that the basic goal of the action is to deprive convicted war criminals of honorary decorations.
Which, it is certain, will not happen, since the current, and very likely the future president of the Republic of Croatia, Zoran Milanović, is a man who very often continued with this practice of honoring those people.
Which ultimately leads us to the question of where we are today and have we even moved anywhere as a society? And the answer would be that the only direction in which we have moved is the one in which we anesthetize ourselves with generally accepted myths and with the belief that we live in society exactly as it should be. But in the end, what can we expect from a society where the Christmas tree is a political issue?
Bonus video:
