Santa Claus had better get his skates on, as Christmas is coming early in one country this year.
The controversial leader of the South American country, Nicolas Maduro, has announced that the festive season will kick off on 1 October this year instead as he’s in the mood to deck the halls already.
The president of Venezuela, 61 revealed the strange schedule update during his weekly TV show, Con Maduro+, on Monday (2 September), explaining that he saw it as though he was giving an early gift to his people.
He told viewers: “It is September and it already smells like Christmas.
“And that is why this year, in homage to you, in gratitude to you, I am going to decree the advancement of Christmas to October 1. Christmas arrived for everyone, in peace, joy and security!”
Not everyone is too convinced about the latter part of his statement, though.
Maduro’s decision to denounce 25 December is widely being viewed as an attempt to distract from the current political climate in his country following the recent presidential election.
President Nicolas Maduro announced he is bringing Christmas forward (Alfredo Lasry R/Getty Images)
Maduro claimed his third term in July this year, having been in office since 2013, but there has been outrage from opposition parties as well as from across the globe regarding this result.
Leader of the opposition, Edmundo González, is one of the people who have questioned the validity of the election outcome, with his team explaining that their own polling data proved he had in fact won.
Vote tally sheets – which are printed by every electronic voting machine – are said to have showed that González actually got more than 80 percent of the vote.
As a result, Maduro’s rival has now got a target on his back and has reportedly gone into hiding.
Just a few hours before the Christmas announcement was made, Venezuelan authorities published an arrest warrant for González which accused him of ‘crimes associated with terrorism‘.
Venezuela’s Prosecutor’s Office said that the politician, 75, had failed to respond to three summons regarding an investigation into his claims about the election result.
“No-one in this country is above the laws, above the institutions,” Maduro told people tuning into his show on Monday.
He then drastically switched gears and went on to reveal that he was tweaking the dates of Christmas this year.
The festive period in Venezuela will now bizarrely kick off on 1 October (Pedro Rances Mattey/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
It is thought the president might be trying to win his people over with the announcement, as his government has previously increased aid and food packages for those in need during the festive season.
This is not the first time he’s started chopping and changing the calendar either, as Christmas was brought forward to begin on 15 October back in 2020.
It arrived even earlier in 2021, with Maduro moving it to 4 October after a year of economic hardship for Venezuela.
And last year, he moved Christmas to 1 November and expressed regret he’d not done it sooner, CNN reported.
You don’t know whether you’re coming or going with this fella, by the sounds of things.
The Venezuelan Episcopal Conference on Tuesday slammed Maduro’s latest stunt, saying that Christmas is ‘not to be used for political or propaganda goals’.
“Christmas commences on December 25,” it said in a defiant statement.
But, no matter which day Maduro wants to eat his Christmas dinner on, it won’t drown out the noise from around the world regarding the recent election.
The European Union has already refused to recognise his presidency if his government does not provide proof of his supposed win, while the US also believe there is a boatload of evidence that González actually earned the most votes.