The World Economic Forum has called for Christmas holiday traditions to be cancelled in coming years as part of an effort to save the environment.
This is not true. The WEF has not said this, and the claim comes from a video that provides no evidence.
A post on Facebook shared more than 6,000 times just after Christmas claims: “The World Economic Forum is now calling for Christmas holiday traditions to be canceled [sic] in coming years as part of an effort to save the environment.”
This is not true. We can find no evidence of the World Economic Forum (WEF) saying this, nor does the Facebook post provide any.
The post includes a video from the US website NewsPunch, which has a history of publishing misinformation, according to other fact checkers.
The video claims that the WEF has launched a “controversial new initiative” for “Christmas holiday traditions to be cancelled in coming years”, but provides no evidence that this initiative exists. Instead, it includes several media reports from CNN and the Guardian about people cancelling Christmas plans to avoid spreading Covid-19 last year, and about alternative Christmas meals.
The video says that the WEF “ordered mainstream media outlets to begin pushing the anti-Christmas narrative”, but again provides no evidence of this.
The WEF has published some suggestions for sustainable Christmas gifts, and in previous years it has also published articles on the environmental impacts of Christmas jumpers, glitter and trees. But it has not announced any plans to “cancel” Christmas traditions.
The Australian fact checker AAP Factcheck has also debunked this video.
The WEF is a very common target of misinformation and conspiracy theories, which we have written about many times before.
Image courtesy of Juliescribbles
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the WEF has not announced a plan to cancel Christmas.
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