Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the construction of ambivalent boundaries between the secular and the religious in the context of festive practices in kindergartens in Austria. It shows how these processes generate inclusionary experiences of belonging for some children and marginalization for others.

Paper long abstract:

Almost every winter, the beginning of Christmas season in Austria is heralded by heated public debates about the proper place of religious celebrations in public childcare institutions for children before school-age. Propelled by increasing anti-Muslim racism, these discussions usually revolve around half-true stories, for example about how Saint Nicholas has allegedly been banned from public kindergartens out of what right-wing politicians frame as "false respect" for Muslim children. Based on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork in two state-regulated and -financed kindergartens in Vienna, this paper explores how kindergarten staff handles these tensions and strives to reconcile their task of transmitting "Austrian traditions" with an understanding of kindergarten as a secular space. For that purpose, I trace how kindergarten pedagogues and their assistants put considerable energy and effort into the production of secularized versions of Christian festivities, while celebratory practices related to other religions are predominantly constructed as a familial responsibility. The paper particularly pays attention to material and spatial dimensions of festive practices like decorating, eating, playing and parading and illustrates how these amount to a selective demarcation as well as blurring of boundaries between public and private spheres. Considering, furthermore, how children participate in, appropriate and distance themselves from these celebrations, it also traces how festive practices nurture experiences of intense belonging for some children, while they feed into and deepen the marginalisation of others.