Amid a surge in online anti-Muslim hate speech targeting both Muslims and migrants in Western countries during this year’s Christmas festivities, social media users are widely circulating footage claiming it shows Muslims in Town Square tearing down a Christmas tree decoration, questioning immigration policies and spreading anti-Muslim stereotypes.
Old Video of Christmas Tree Vandalism Resurfaces Online
“Muslims gather together in the Town Square to tear down a large Christmas tree meant for families to enjoy,” a user wrote.
“Anyone else getting tired of this?” the user asks.
The 29-second video received 2 million views, 12,000 reposts, and 33,000 likes. It depicts a group of young men climbing a large Christmas tree, tearing down its decorations, and throwing them to a crowd watching and filming the scene.
Another user posted a similar video of the scene filmed from a different angle and asked: “Imagine if we behaved like this on Eid. Multiculturalism only ever works one way doesn't it?”
After running a thorough reverse image search along with advanced keyword searches, we found that the videos of the scene first surfaced earlier this year, in January 2025.
“Tolerance, you say? This is how the Muslim fight against Christmas trees happens in Egypt…” a user wrote in Russian while sharing one of the videos.
Other users also shared the footage, questioning the tolerance of the “Muslims vandalizing the tree.”
Following the watermark visible on the videos, which reads “Nourhanrezk292,” led us to an Instagram user who posted the same clips on January 1, 2025.
@Nourhanrezk292 also shared the second footage on January 2, 2025.
The Instagram user also posted another video taken from a different angle, showing the young men climbing the tree and tearing off the decorations.
Other videos taken from the same location, where the large Christmas tree is visible, were also posted on the user’s Instagram profile on January 1, 2025. One of the videos additionally shows New Year fireworks.
Misbar's team contacted Nourhan Rezk, who posted the videos, to ask when and where they were filmed. She confirmed that she personally recorded them at midnight on January 1, 2025, during New Year celebrations in Madinaty, a modern integrated city in Egypt developed by the Talaat Moustafa Group (TMG).
According to Nourhan, the videos quickly went viral, appearing on popular social media pages and being reshared by celebrities. When asked whether the young men who vandalized the tree faced any consequences, she said they “fully destroyed the tree” and received no punishment.
X Flags Misleading Context on Posts Sharing Christmas Tree Videos
As the videos resurfaced amid the 2025 Christmas festivities, Grok and X added misleading and deceptive context to the posts containing the viral clips, claiming that one of the videos was filmed in 2016 at Cairo Mall in Egypt.
Meanwhile, recycling content from users’ comments, X added notifications to the posts stating, “this is a tradition that allows people to share the ornaments and gifts from the tree, it happened in Cairo in 2018,” and included links to articles addressing a similar but completely different video of people vandalizing a Christmas tree indoors.
In the notification, X connected the video to the Swedish tradition of Knut’s party, during which people sing and dance around the Christmas tree, take ornaments, candy, and apples, smash the gingerbread house, and eat it to mark the end of the Christmas season, noting that the video surfaced in January, at the end of the festivities.
However, Saint Knut’s party takes place annually on January 13 and is not a popular celebration in Arab countries.
Meanwhile, the X notifications included links to articles and fact-checks related to a completely different video showing a group of young men vandalizing a Christmas tree indoors.
The 2016 reports referred to claims of “offended Muslims” attacking a mall Christmas tree in Sweden or a “western nation,” while some users said the incident occurred in Egypt. Some of these reports stated that the video was originally posted in January 2016 during a “tree plundering” event, described as a “Christian tradition dating back to the 1800s.”
The report noted that the celebration, also known as a “Knut’s party,” is reportedly held to “mark the end of the Christmas season every January 13th, where ornaments are stripped from the tree, and edible decorates like candy and fruits are eaten, which appears to be what the video in question shows.”
“The video clearly doesn’t show angry Muslim men attacking the Christmas tree out of anger, as has been claimed,” the report added.
The video resurfaced in 2019, and debunking fact-checks noted that the Swedish fact-checking site Viralgranskaren had already clarified in 2016 that the event was linked to Coptic Christian Christmas on January 7, and that the footage actually showed young people in Egypt stealing presents, as opposed to the claims.
Similar videos of men vandalizing Christmas trees also emerged in January 2019, purportedly showing men climbing a Christmas tree, removing ornaments, and throwing them at people in the streets of El-Korba Square.
According to reports, the Heliopolis Heritage Foundation restored order in El-Korba and repaired and redecorated the tree in less than 24 hours, with the help of locals.
Young Men Vandalizing Christmas Tree Decorations in Egypt
In 2016, Egyptian news outlets investigated one of the circulating videos and reported that it showed young men at Mall of Arabia climbing the Christmas tree while others removed the tree’s decorations. According to the report, the video appeared on YouTube on January 4, 2016.
The report also noted that a number of social media users in Germany shared a video clip showing people vandalizing a Christmas tree, which was promoted as depicting “a group of Muslims and refugees vandalizing Christmas celebrations in Germany.”
The report indicated that the German magazine Der Spiegel noted how opponents of accepting refugees and those hostile to Muslims promoted the video as being filmed in German cities, with some claiming it was in a shopping mall in Dresden, others in Bremen, and still others in Hamburg.
The news report confirmed that the video was not filmed in Germany but in Egypt, showing shoppers at Mall of Arabia in October 6 City last January. The report further noted that “this was an incident in which there was no objection to Christmas celebrations, but it was chaos that security dealt with at the time.”
Surge in Anti-Muslim Hate Speech Online
Following Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the mayoral election in November 2025, and after the shooting of two U.S. National Guard members in Washington and the Bondi Beach attack during Hanukkah celebrations in Sydney, a wave of anti-Muslim and anti-migrant hate speech surged online, targeting both Muslims and migrants living in Western countries.
While anti-Muslim hate speech is not a new issue, it intensified further with the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in content creation and sharing. These incidents triggered a surge in disinformation and misleading material that decontextualized the separate events and propagated anti-Muslim stereotypes, leveraging breaking news into coordinated disinformation campaigns targeting these groups.
Social media accounts spreading disinformation have created a fertile environment for manipulation by aligning outdated, misleading, or even AI-generated content with real breaking news events, making harmful narratives appear credible and prompting ordinary users to engage with or adopt hostile views or actions toward these communities.
Misbar has focused its efforts on debunking recycled and outdated videos and photos, as well as entirely AI-generated clips and imagery shared in connection with these incidents and other global breaking news events.
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