S TRUNG ACROSS the cobbled street, between half-timbered Alsatian houses, the festive white lights pronounce: “Strasbourg, capitale de Noël”. In the run-up to Christmas, every façade of this town tucked up against France’s border with Germany seems to sparkle. The sweet smell of gingerbread and cinnamon-tinged vin chaud hangs in the air. In the courtyard of the 18th-century Palais Rohan, now a municipal museum, a life-size wooden crèche (nativity scene) has been installed, complete with real bleating sheep. The town hall has illuminated giant angels with trumpets above the narrow street that leads to the cathedral.

Strasbourg at Christmas captures Europe’s festive enthusiasm as well as its diverse heritage. The town blends the Catholic tradition with the Protestant. It is as proud of its many crèches, whose pre-Reformation roots reach back to medieval times, as it is of its Christmas trees, which legend says Martin Luther introduced in the 16th century. Indeed Strasbourg is said to be the birthplace of the first decorated tree, in 1605, adorned then with roses, apples, wafers and sweets. Closer to Munich than it is to Paris, annexed by Germany in 1871 and 1940, Strasbourg reflects the Germanic. Locals call the Christmas market, founded in 1570 and one of the world’s oldest, Christkindelsmärik. With its Provençal clay crèche village figures (santons), and Scandinavian bearded gnomes (tomte), the market embraces the Mediterranean and the Nordic too.

These days Christmas time in this town, as elsewhere in Europe, also has a strong secular pull. Strasbourg in the festive season in reality mixes the commercial and the spiritual, as tacky plastic ornaments and winking Father Christmas figures compete for attention with the crucifix and holy child. A massive 2m visitors, of all faiths, crowd into the town in December every year. One of the five people murdered in a terrorist attack near the Christmas market a year ago was a local garage mechanic of Afghan origin, who had been visiting the market with his family.

Strasbourg’s unapologetic embrace of Christmas, in other words, locates it at the intersection of many of Europe’s traditions. Yet if there is one country in which the town’s relaxed approach to religion feels in reality distinctly odd, it is France. Elsewhere in the country, French town halls hang lights that wish their citizens a secular joyeuses fêtes, or happy holidays. No French state school is allowed to hold a nativity play or carol service, just as no French town hall can display a nativity scene. When the far-right mayor of Béziers, Robert Ménard, installed a crèche in his town hall, it was ruled illegal and he was ordered to take it down. This weekend, after a nativity performance outside a church in Toulouse was disrupted, the archbishop deplored the fact that “a simple reminder of the birth of Jesus…is no longer respected in our country.”

France’s strict form of secularism, known as laïcité, was enshrined in law in 1905 after a long struggle with the Catholic church. Today 54% of the French say they are Catholic. This doctrine protects their private right to religious expression. But it also keeps religion separate from public life. It was these principles that led France to ban the Muslim headscarf from state schools, as well as the crucifix and other “conspicuous” religious signs.

Strasbourg, by contrast, like the surrounding Alsace region, enjoys a derogation under the Napoleonic Concordat of 1801, which survives to this day. Four faiths—the Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed churches and Judaism—are established religions in the region. Public schools teach religious studies. Religious ministers are paid by the state. The town hall contributed to the financing of the city’s grand mosque. The French president even officially appoints the archbishop of Strasbourg.

For those in the rest of France brought up on laïc law, Strasbourg’s relaxed approach to religion, like its town hall’s involvement in Christmas, is startling. For France is periodically consumed by a divisive row of one sort or another about religious expression. If it is not over a municipal nativity scene then it is about an attempt to ban a parent from accompanying a class trip while wearing the Muslim veil. The line between the secular and the sacred in France is a constant source of contest and conflict.

It does not automatically follow, of course, that Strasbourg is spared religious trouble. On the contrary, the terrorist responsible for the attack in December 2018, Chérif Chekatt, was Strasbourg-born. A local network actively recruited jihadists to head to Syria to fight for Islamic State. The region has rooted extreme-right and neo-Nazi fringe groups, and periodically suffers anti-Semitic acts. Officials are particularly concerned about overseas Turkish influence in the town. “There are many hidden tensions in Strasbourg,” says Hakim El Karoui, author of a report on French Islam for the Institut Montaigne, a think-tank. He argues that part of the problem is precisely that Islam, unlike other faiths, does not enjoy the same status as the (locally established) religions.

O come, o come, Emmanuel

Yet the tie between Strasbourg’s town hall and its religious authorities points to a less abrasive link between the political and the spiritual. Officials and clerics talk often, and know one another. To mark Ramadan, the town hall hosted an iftar dinner on its premises—unthinkable elsewhere. Christophe Castaner, the interior minister, who attended another iftar dinner, called such events “an inspiration for the whole of France”.

Elsewhere in the country, a nativity scene built by a far-right mayor constitutes provocative identity politics. Strasbourg’s version, by contrast, is regarded as “normal and natural”, says Murat Ercan, a leader of Turkish origin at the regional Muslim council. “We shouldn’t be naive, there are real difficulties,” says Nicolas Matt, in charge at the town hall of the link with religious leaders. “But we believe in celebrating difference. The fact that we talk to each other means that we know how to talk about religion, and that gives us a common language.” Joyeux Noël. ■