The crowd then sang carols and nationalist hymns around a Christmas tree, with gifts being donated to working-class attendees of the speech.[5] After taking power in 1933, Nazi ideologues initially sought to reject Germany's long-held Christmas traditions - renaming the festival Julfest, and propagating its Germanic origins as the celebration of the winter solstice. But for the majority of Germans, the Christian traditions remained the basis of the holiday, and the churches were outraged by the removal of Christ from Christmas and maintained the Christian traditions among themselves.[6]