Maduro reacts to criticism for bringing Christmas early in Venezuela

One week after giving start of Christmas celebrations in VenezuelaNicolás Maduro targeted journalists from different countries who questioned the measure, which was ordered amid claims from the international community about fraud in the July elections.

The Venezuelan dictator described critics of the Christian holiday celebrated in December as “imbeciles” and “mercenaries.”

“There are journalists who from Miami, Spain, Colombia, speculate why Maduro brought Christmas early. It’s not the first time, idiots, we’ve done it before,” he said on his weekly TV program and continued: “Idiots mercenaries! They write articles saying that we overtake them for this and that. Yes, we advanced them and we are happy. Our happiness hurts them. Goggles!”.

In that sense, Maduro ranted against the “international right” and justified why he decided to advance the end of the year festivities, since they also included the New Year celebrationsas an event that began on October 1st.

“It hurts them because we overtake them, since it is the most beautiful vaccine that we have known and proven to dissipate your bad energies, demons and demons“, considered.

Furthermore, although without mentioning her, he pointed out the opposition leader María Corina Machado: “From you, demon, who want to fill Venezuela with violence, uncertainty, hatred, intolerance. In the face of the hatred of demons, blessings of early Christmas for the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela! And let the global right burn. If it burns, let them scratch it. We are happy.”

Despite the striking nature of the decision imposed by the Executive Branch of Venezuela, it is not an unprecedented fact, given that it is a determination that he has made since he became president in 2013. For example In 2020, Christmas was imposed on October 15with the aim of stopping public attention from being focused on the problems that the coronavirus pandemic caused in that country.

He repeated the same strategy in 2021 and now in 2024, just over two months after the controversial presidential elections that unleashed complaints of fraud, demonstrations and police repression throughout the country with arrests and deaths in the streets.

What seems to be a crazy idea for the president of Venezuela is an annual activity that he has done since he became president of his country. The first opportunity was in 2013. At the beginning of November of that year, he used the holiday to try to raise the spirits of the population after the death of former president Hugo Chávez. “We are going to bring Christmas forward so that people can enjoy this time of peace and love, and forget a little about the difficulties,” he said at the time.

The same thing was repeated during each of the following years, although not always on the same date.

• 2015: moved forward to October 30.
• 2016: moved forward to October 28.
• 2017: moved forward to October 31.
• 2018: moved forward to October 29.
• 2019: advanced to October 31.
• 2020: moved forward to October 29.
• 2021: moved forward to October 27.
• 2022: advanced to October 30.
• 2023: moved forward to September 1.

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