From Reuters, with thanks to Anthony:
ROME (Reuters) – An Italian teacher’s efforts to make a Christmas carol more acceptable to young Muslim students by removing the word “Jesus” has rekindled the debate over religious symbols in the Roman Catholic country.
A middle-school teacher in the northern Italian town of Como set off a storm when she told Muslims in her class that if they preferred they could replace the line “this is the day of Jesus” with “this is the day of virtue.”
“Jesus banned in Christmas songs” the daily Il Giornale, run by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s brother, said in a front-page headline Sunday.
“Substituting the word Jesus in a Christmas song is a serious mistake and an offence against the entire Catholic community,” Como’s mayor, Stefano Bruno, from the center-right Forza Italia (Go Italy) party, told Agi news agency.