Venezuela’s socialist regime kicked off its mandatory 2025 “Christmas season” on Wednesday with a fireworks show launched from the Helicoide (“The Helix”), its largest and most infamous torture center.
Socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro has unilaterally changed the start of Christmas season in Venezuela to whatever date suits him best almost every year since he succeeded late socialist dictator Hugo Chávez in 2013. The practice has become commonplace from 2019 onwards.
Venezuela is a majority Catholic nation and, much like the rest of the Christian world, celebrates the Christmas season during a four-week period in December known as Advent, marking the birth of Jesus of Nazareth on December 25, Christmas Day.
Despite that, Maduro — whose regime has a long history of animosity towards the Venezuelan Catholic Church and has co-opted Christian traditions numerous times — has moved the Christmas season forward to anywhere between October and November. In September, he decided that 2025’s Christmas season should begin on Wednesday, October 1, and ordered his regime to start putting up Christmas decorations all over the country that month to comply with his decree.
The Venezuelan regime kicked off its mandated early Christmas season on Wednesday with nationwide government activities, including Christmas street fairs organized by the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). The Wednesday “festivities” culminated with an evening fireworks show from the Helicoide torture center which the regime had lit up all night.
The Helicoide, now known as the Maduro regime’s largest torture center, is a structure in Caracas originally conceived and built in the 1950s during the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez that, had it been finished, would have become the world’s first drive-thru shopping mall. In 2019, the BBC described it as an “extraordinary space-age building” that towered the sprawling slums below. Pérez Jiménez was overthrown in January 1958 and the project remained unfinished. The structure remained mostly uninhabited and unused in the following decades.
The Venezuelan socialist regime eventually turned it into both the headquarters of its Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN) and the country’s largest torture and confinement center for political prisoners. Throughout the years, political prisoners of the Maduro regime have denounced the harrowing torture and inhumane conditions that they endured during their imprisonment at the infamous center.
Most bizarrely, the Maduro regime spent an undisclosed amount of money in 2024 to commission a luxury basketball court inside the Helicoide’s top dome — which now serves as the home venue for Spartans DC, a local basketball team founded in 2019. According to the Venezuelan non-government organization Transparencia Venezuela, the team is linked to top members of Maduro’s repressive apparatus.
In addition to the regime’s Wednesday “Christmas” activities, Nicolás Maduro released a video on social media proclaiming the start of the Christmas season and wishing Venezuelans a “Merry Christmas.”
“Today marks the start of Christmas, a sacred time for Venezuelan families, and here we are, celebrating being together, seeing how our loved ones are doing, and checking in on their health. Today more than ever, we cling to smiles and affection, and Christmas is a genuine time for that, for strengthening this noble and unyieldingly joyful country,” Maduro says in the video.
The Maduro regime also released a new episode of Súper Bigote (“Super Mustache”), Nicolás Maduro’s superhero alter ego, in which the cartoon version of Maduro proclaims that Christmas started in October 1 “as is tradition in our revolution of love.”
“This formula that we have built together year after year has worked. It has brought unity, hope, and light. So my call is clear, let us celebrate with awareness, love, and joy, so that every neighborhood, street, and home is filled with lights, music, and hope,” the cartoon Maduro says in the video.
“Because no one can take away our peace and tranquility with economic and media warfare, territorial pressures, and tricks imposed by the empire,” he continued, referring to the “threat” of the U.S. military deployment in Caribbean international waters to combat drug cartels in the region.
It is largely believed that Maduro’s constant rescheduling of Christmas is part of a tactic aimed at masking Venezuela’s dire economic and societal problems caused by the disastrous socialist policies of the Maduro regime.
On Wednesday, the local outlet El Pitazo reached out to several Venezuelans, who expressed that they had little to nothing to celebrate due to their dire economic situation and the rapid devaluation of the Venezuelan bolivar, the nation’s near-worthless currency.
“I would like to celebrate, but this year has been difficult for me. The company where I worked closed its doors in July after filing for bankruptcy, and I am unemployed. My severance pay will not arrive until December, because everything is too expensive and I cannot find a job,” a woman identified as Carmen Buitriago, told El Pitazo.
“How are you going to celebrate Christmas if you don’t have money to eat? What good is Christmas when you earn 600 bolivares ($3) a month as a Christmas bonus? What can you do with 600 bolivars when you have two children to clothe? Nothing. The economic situation in Venezuela is not conducive to that,” she continued.
“They talk to us about peace and joy, but we live in fear, anger, and uncertainty. The government can sing Christmas carols, but the people are in no condition to celebrate,” university student Luis Navarro reportedly said.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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