Egyptian Christmas tree video falsely represented as Canada, other countries
- Published on December 26, 2025 at 18:40
- 3 min read
- By Gwen Roley, AFP Canada
Attacks on Christmas markets in Europe in recent years have raised security concerns for public events around the holiday, but online claims that a video shows Muslims in Canada vandalizing a large decorated tree in December 2025 are false. Geolocation reveals the scene -- which has also been inaccurately claimed to show France and the United States -- was actually filmed near Cairo, Egypt almost a year earlier.
"Muslims in Canada climbed a Christmas tree & began to destroy it…" says the caption on a December 23, 2025 video on X.
The clip shows five people scrabbling up a tall tree, removing ornaments and throwing them to a receptive crowd below.
"Saying Christmas is Haram," the post continues, using an Arabic word referring to forbidden acts or things. "These western countries are so so naive."
Similar posts placing the scene in Canada spread from X to Facebook and also appeared in Japanese.
Additional posts alleged that the video captured Muslims destroying a tree in an unspecified "Town Square," while others in English and Spanish variously claimed it was filmed in France or the United States.
In Europe, deadly attacks have taken place at Christmas markets over the past decade. But genuine concerns about security have circulated alongside mischaracterized footage purported to show Muslim immigrants taking over holiday celebrations in Germany and France.
AFP has also seen an uptick in unsupported claims of Muslims in Canada imposing their religion, "intimidating" Christians or starting church fires throughout 2025.
The claims the Christmas tree clip shows holiday vandalism in Europe or North America are similarly misleading.
Arabic text laid over one iteration of the footage translates to "Christmas in Egypt is different."
A watermark on the video, meanwhile, leads to an Instagram account that posted multiple angles of the scene on New Year's Day 2025, geotagged to the Madinaty real estate development outside Cairo (archived here, here, and here). The account posted additional clips of the tree still decorated as fireworks were shot off on December 31, 2024 (archived here and here).
AFP geolocated the images to Open Air Mall in Madinaty (archived here). A cylindrical building and a structure with an antenna near a body of water match the surroundings seen in the footage being misrepresented online.
AFP reached out to the user, but a response was not immediately forthcoming.
The Arab fact-checking organization Misbar, however, was able to reach the account holder who confirmed that the footage of the men climbing the tree was recorded on January 1, 2025 in Madinaty.
Additional visuals of people taking apart decorated trees in the majority Muslim country, which has a Coptic Christian minority, have spread in posts falsely claiming they depicted the destruction of Christmas trees in Europe or the United States. The US fact-checking organization Snopes determined that at least one video depicted a festive gift presentation, while other debunks have been less conclusive.
Read more of AFP's reporting on misinformation in Canada here.
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