The Priest Who Banned Santa Claus

In December 1951, the city of Dijon became the centre of a bizarre national scandal when local church leaders decided that Santa Claus was a pagan threat to Christianity. Clergymen officially "sentenced" a large effigy of Père Noël to death. They tied him to the railings of the Dijon Cathedral and publicly burned him in front of hundreds of Sunday school children. The event caused such an uproar that the French government had to step in to calm the public.