Party’s over, Paris: Fearful French cancel New Year’s Eve celebration

(by Gabrielle Fahmy, NY Post) — …Paris has shockingly decided to dim the lights on its annual New Year’s Eve [celebration] along the iconic Champs-Élysées.

The massive midnight concert that drew a jubilant crowd of a million people last year — with the festivities having drawn throngs to the “most beautiful avenue in the world” for six decades — has been scrapped and replaced by a pre-recorded video to be viewed in the safety and comfort of French living rooms.

The fireworks will still illuminate the Arc de Triomphe when the clock strikes 12, but with officials urging revelers to watch on television rather than in person, the soirée will be a far cry from the famed French joie de vivre [a French phrase meaning “joy of living”] of years past.

New Year’s Eve celebration at the Arc de Triomphe – (Photo : Houda Chabir-Robert)

The famed avenue has become a flashpoint of violence lately, with throngs of young, mostly Muslim migrants streaming in from Paris’ infamous suburbs at night looking for trouble, looting lux stores, and brawling with Parisians and police.

The Paris police, which pressed the mayor to scrap the concert, cited security concerns such as “unpredictable crowd movements” without going into details – but critics loudly blamed France’s open-door immigration policies.

“It’s obvious that this is the result of massive unvetted Muslim immigration into Europe,” said Daniel Di Martino, an immigration fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

“Western Europe has had a terrorism problem for many years now, and that has been exacerbated because of unvetted Islamic immigration as a result of the refugee crisis of over a decade ago.”

Even open-air Christmas markets are being treated as high-risk targets by France’s interior minister Laurent Nuñez.

In an urgent letter to state officials, he warned of a “very high terror threat” – citing terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS – and ordered beefed up police presence at Christmas markets, and to restrict vehicle access and mobilize intelligence agencies.

“Christmas markets are popular and symbolic gathering places that are likely to be targeted by violent or politically motivated attacks,” Mr. Nuñez said.

Nuñez cited the 2018 Strasbourg [France] Christmas market attack, where 29-year-old Cherif Chekatt, a French Moroccan “gangster-jihadist,” opened fire as he yelled “Allah Akbar,” killing five people and wounding 11. Police shot him down after a two-day manhunt.

According to the Mr. Nuñez, six terrorist plots have been thwarted to date in 2025 in France.

“When you read the propaganda of terrorist groups, Christmas markets are targets as are law enforcement officers, as are places of worship of the Jewish community, as are a number of public institutions,” he said on French television.

“Unfortunately, in France, there is such a turn toward savagery that everything becomes a pretext for violence,” said former interior minister Bruno Retailleau, who is head of Les Républicains political party, slamming the scrapped New Year’s Eve plans as capitulation.

But violence has been increasing in the City of Lights.

“Last year, we had more scares in two hours of New Year’s Eve celebrations on the Champs-Élysées than in three weeks of the Olympic Games,” a police commissioner told France Info.

That Dec. 31, nearly 984 cars were torched and 420 people arrested in what police called “senseless and endemic violence.”

“These acts of violence are the product of a descent into savagery,” the then interior minister said at the time, denouncing what he called “cowards and thugs who attack the property of often modest French citizens.”

Last month, Le Monde reported that France is dealing with a new generation of younger, less experienced and more unpredictable jihadists.

The six thwarted attacks this year were plotted by terrorists who were between 17 and 22. …

Published at NY Post on Dec. 13, 2025. Reprinted here for educational purposes only. May not be reproduced on other websites without permission.