A bill tabled by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s ruling “Brothers of Italy” party to make Christian Christmas celebrations compulsory in schools and universities has sparked backlash.

The bill tabled in the Italian Parliament would prevent Christmas celebrations from being renamed “winter holidays” and would also make it mandatory to set up a nativity scene.

Ruling party senator Lavinia Menouni introduced the bill, which provides for a ban on preventing “initiatives promoted by parents, students or relevant school authorities to continue activities related to traditional celebrations linked to Christmas and Christian Easter”, such as ” manger, theater performances and other events”.

Menuni argued that Christian Christmas celebrations have changed in recent years due to alleged sensitivity towards followers of other faiths, according to her, citing a special relationship between Christmas and Italy’s “national identity”, saying similar rules should also apply to Easter.

The bill provides for penalties for school principals if they do not follow the rules.

The reactions of both the opposition and teachers’ unions and school directors were sharp.

“The country’s traditions must certainly be respected, but enforcing them by law is out of place and time,” said the president of the national association of school principals, ANP, Antonello Giannelli.

The teachers’ union FLC CGIL recalled that Italy is a secular country and that “actions like this, which interfere, among other things, with the autonomy of schools, are unacceptable”.

“They want to ban anything they don’t like,” Greens MP Luana Janella said of the Meloni government.

It is not yet known when the bill will be debated in Parliament.