First, the church insists on having the festival be held on Christmas and on the festival having "suitable" financial resources allocated to it, now they're trying to reduce the strain it causes on the church by reducing their own obligations by saying "It's for the people" and just dumping all of the responsibilities of the preparations of the festival on the kingdom.
More appropriately, the church insists on having the festival be held but doesn't even want to help in preparing it. The reasoning of "allocating funds for the poor people" sounds good but it just feels like more of an excuse to shirk responsibility rather than the church actually having good intentions.