Is Christmas for Atheists? (page 2)

jstalin

I'm an atheist and I celebrate Christmas. Not with religious songs or going to church, but by enjoying my family and celebrating our time together.

daystar

Is Christmas really for true Atheists?

(bold and italics mine)

Eh? What's that? True what?!

Scully

http://www.positiveatheism.org/mail/eml8291.htm

Do Atheists Celebrate
Religious Holidays? Kayla

[email protected]

any

Graphic Rule

From: "Positive Atheism" <[email protected]>
To: "Kayla"
Date: February 22, 2003 5:02 PM
Subject: Re: Positive_Atheism_Letters_Section

An atheist is anybody who lacks a god-belief for any reason, including ignorance of god-beliefs, agnosticism, acute indifference to the subject of religion, or knowing for a fact that all god-claims have just got to be phony! Any of these reasons for being without theism qualifies one for calling herself an atheist. And if you can think of any other reasons (short of feeling the uniquely compelling persuasion of the cold barrel of a Saturday Night Special pressing against your temple, for example), then they're probably valid, too!

If a man walks up to you and makes a god-claim and you go "Amen to that, brother!" then you are a theist. If you don't, then you are an atheist. This is the traditional definition, used by a large majority of atheistic thinkers and philosophers since the rise of the Era of Enlightenment made it legal to be a non-Christian in Europe.

The vast majority of atheists are indifferent to religion -- and thus, indifferent to their own atheism! Of course!! Who wants to sit there and think about something that distinguishes you from a modest majority of humans? Most of us simply don't think about religion -- or our atheism -- at all. Others of us are flat-out obsessed with it, often putting on the appearance of being bigoted (and just as often crossing that line and flat-out being bigoted!). Some activists (such as myself) are engaged in efforts to make life better for people who happen to be atheists.

Shorter Graphic Rule

Since no gods tell us what to think, we're on our own -- pure and simple. While you can easily find full consensus among humans regarding a great many moral questions, the opposite is true when it comes to matters of what religionists call ritual. And holidays would certainly fall into the ritual category, don't you think? If there is no consensus regarding ritual, we are left with a strong suggestion that these are personal and cultural matters, based entirely on who you are, how you view the world, how (and where) you were raised, and what you may or may not have done with that upbringing upon entering adulthood.

In other words, celebrate what you want to celebrate -- while you still can! If Christmas is when you'd just as soon pick up some overtime, then there are plenty of other holidays. You can also make one up: pick the day and consult one of those "This Day in History" references that broadcast journalists use, and tip a Guinness or three to some obscure President or war hero or even the anniversary of an oblique moment in the life of a religious leader (such as the day Joseph Smith's first wife allegedly seized and destroyed the first manuscript to the Book of Mormon forcing him to start from scratch and write the whole thing over again). If you lack creativity, then check out Mexico, whose people celebrate over 6000 holidays and festivals each and every year! Surely you can find something!

And if you don't want to, then don't. We're not going to send you off to writhe and wail forever in the pits of the cosmic moral barbecue over a decision like that! We're not like Jesus, you know!

I celebrated Christmas for the first time last year and it was a hoot! I saw no person for over two months. It was the most un-Christmassy Christmas I think anyone could ever hope for when facing the prospect of doing your first-ever Christmas as an adult of 46 years. One would not want to be overwhelmed with Christmas on the first date! (I pour scorn upon myself, here' waxing, as they say, Hudibrastic, which is to say mock-heroic, à la Samuel Butler's Hudibras.) Numerous friends and acquaintances knew I was celebrating and knew I was alone and recently crippled and thus very much housebound. But nobody who has an extended family or large "family" of friends (or even just a warm heart and hearth) invited me over to join in their festivities. (So much for Jesus's commandment to visit the frail and imprisoned!) So I tipped my own Guinness to the bitter cold and held the gray cat in my arms, as is my habit anyway, no matter how I feel.

It's not like I'm evil or I smell weird or I belch or I get plastered; I don't have a history of turning over the buffet table, stealing the kids' Christmas toys, or biting the bottom off of a chocolate to see what flavor it is and then returning it to the box if I don't happen to like that flavor. I am none of these things that were invited to our family's family reunion. The worst that ever happened (and it usually does, at one point) is that I'll catch the first half of a migraine and will need to go lie down for a while until it blows over.

Shorter Graphic Rule

I must address the question of seeing atheism as a religion rather than simply a religious view, that is, an opinion about religion. I do this simply because this discussion will have a bearing on the answer to your question.

I do not consider atheism a religion; rather, I consider it the very absence of religion.

Of course, while I think and act as a "strong" atheist, I am technically a "weak" atheist! This is because I finally learned to stop falling for the chauvinism foisted upon our culture by the Christians, chauvinism which tempts me to say, "I don't believe in God," rather than saying, "I don't assent to the claim you just made." In other words, "I disagree with your opinions about religion."

Listen closely to this language: "I don't believe in God" -- or -- "I don't believe in ... God ..." -- or -- "I don't believe in [the] God [who exists]." When I use that language, it begins to sound as if I'm "acknowledging" the existence of the Christian deity! (Oops! I did it again! rather, it begins to sound as if I'm granting assent to the Christian god-claim!") The correct -- and unbiased -- way to state the case is to say, "I lack a god-belief of any kind." This language technically puts me into the "weak" camp -- by default. The better, even more direct (and fully truthful) way to say it is, "I have no reason to grant assent to any of the god-claims that I have encountered." It's one thing to use shorthand among friends and associates who know what we mean when we use abbreviated language ("I don't believe in God"). But when dealing with an evangelist (or Evangelical) or when being cornered by the religious nut at work (etc.), we do well to make the god-claim itself the grammatical subject of our sentences ("I disagree with the claim you just made") rather than speaking as if their claim is true or that we agree with their claim ("God doesn't exist," which almost sounds like, "[The] God [that we agree exists] doesn't exist").

This keeps the real issue, the god-claim, in the forefront of any discussion of The God Question.

When we are engaged in a discussion of the god-question (or even describing it, as a newspaper reporter would do), to talk about "God" or even about "gods" is to jump the gun: we have not come to any agreement as to the truthfulness or accuracy of any of the various claims that deities exist. If you take a close look at the two, you will note that there is a big difference between them.

I also like to remind myself that whenever I call myself an atheist, I define myself according to what I don't believe, rather than according to anything that I do, think, say, or am. I'm letting other people define me by their behavior and their viewpoints. Specifically, I let them define me by behavior in which I don't engage and viewpoints in which I do not hold!

I think that's why the vast majority of atheists have never once even called themselves "an atheist"! They lack a god belief. Some occasionally assert, "No gods exist!" Some even become antagonistic toward religion at times -- or even any time the subject comes up! For the most part, though, the subject of religion does not interest them at all (at all) and thus neither does atheism. If pushed with a proper definition of the word atheist, most will say, "Yeah, that's me!"

How does this relate to the subject of holidays? Simple: since religion means little if anything at all to me, then it follows that the religious element in the holidays likewise means very little to me.

What is Christmas with the religious element removed? Why, it's the original Solstice celebration with the ancient mythology removed. Let's light a big fire, cook a huge meal, invite everybody we know, and have a festival. Have fun! That's what it's for! Christmas has been going on a lot longer than Christianity has. They simply changed the name of it when they stole it.

So it IS "X-Mas" after all! They whimper, "Put Christ back into Christmas!" No! We don't want to! We don't have to! Christmas, or Solstice, if you will, is about exchanging gifts and eating a big meal. It's always been that way. Santa? the Tree? shoved up the arse of that little angel on top? Chestnuts roasting on an open fire? What do any of the trappings of Christmas have to do with the Christian religion?

The same goes with any holiday that has any nonreligious trappings at all. I simply omit the religious stuff, and get on with the fun!.

Okay, you can go ahead and take part in the religious stuff if you want to (if the situation calls for it). Dig: you may just be the only person sober enough to take Grandma to Midnight Mass. You don't have to actually pray, nobody will know. Nobody needs to know -- especially your frail grandmother, on what is (to her) a very special, very holy night.

Then again, you may be part of the crew searching for bodies after a disaster such as the Great White show in Rhode Island (we're staggering from that mess as I write this). Whenever the workers would find a body, The New York Times reports, they would all stop working, stand up, remove their hats, and pray, as chaplains officiated.

As inappropriate and inconsiderate as an activity such as that might be, are you going to stand up and say something about it? I doubt it.

I know I'm not going to say anything about it -- not even in private, to the chaplains. I don't know who called for this practice! It could easily have been ordered by a guilt-ridden club owner or band member. Hey! Nothing is going to remove the actual guilt for this mess, but I'm not going to rob someone of the opportunity to try to put a little salve on their pain!

The dominant religion in our culture, the Christian religion (like most religions) is obsessed with death. The bias and bigotry and inherent greed displayed by all this (not to mention all the pomp and ritual that followed the World Trade Center attack) shows only that our culture has become steeped in this obsession. Yes, there is a need to say something, to do something, but while you're pulling peoples' charred bodies out of a burned out building is not an appropriate time and place to be expressing your opinion. Nevertheless, if you're ever engaged in this morbid task and they start similar shenanigans, unless you want to make some very unpleasant waves (and many of our readers might want to do just that), just take off your hat with the others and wait until the chaplains are done praying.

Later (perhaps much later), after the sting of this happening has subsided, you might wish to approach the chaplain or officer who decided that it would be done this way and explain, quietly and with as little fanfare as possible, that the religious tradition which you grew up with or which your family now practices considers the ritual of prayer to be degrading. You might want to toss in the opinion that you're glad that Jesus was opposed to the practice of praying in front of others or in public (especially in front of television cameras or print reporters).

But meanwhile, just go along with the rest and don't make waves. True, someone might die in the rubble, waiting for you to get done, who might have lived had they received a breath of air just a few minutes earlier, but that's -- wait a minute! Scratch everything I just said! Go ahead and make a big stink if they do this when you're there! Shout at the top of your lungs that our job right now is to save as many people as possible!

Shortest Graphic Rule

The whole point is this:

Whenever atheists are faced with a sticky decision, the only recourse we have is to think. That's the only thing any of us have, to be sure, but we atheists know that fact. As atheists, we do not have a "God" or anybody else either looking after us or telling us what to do. For this reason, it is paramount for us to think about what we are doing.

Yeah, I'd have a tough time if I were working in a crew and the leaders decided to break the most important law in the country and trample your most precious right; in principle, your most inviolable right: the Liberty of Conscience (under which fall Liberty of Speech and Religious Liberty among others). I'd have a tough time if the leaders were doing this under the cloak of a most solemn and certainly most emotionally upsetting circumstance: a disaster involving the deaths of many.

What goes on in the privacy of my own mind is entirely and exclusively my own business. Thus, I do what I think is right, I refrain from what I think is wrong, and I stand up and either face the consequences or sit back and enjoy the rewards that inevitably follow doing whatever it was that I chose to do.

Cliff Walker
Positive Atheism Magazine
Seven-and-one-half years of service to
people with no reason to believe

Satanus

Scully

I never realised that being an atheist was so complex. I have a newfound respect for youse. I'm glad i'm just a simple pantheist.

S

Gretchen956

Ah, Ross, I see you're here trying to stir up trouble with the athiests as well!

Sherry

Satanus

Ooops, this is the atheist thread. S

funkyderek

I celebrate Christmas. I'm just careful not to go to church or say "Praise the Lord!" in case I get kicked out of the Atheists' Club.

GetBusyLiving

I think more than anything its just funny to watch Christians get pissed off at atheists for celebrating Christmas. More incentive to celebrate. It's almost as nice as eggnog and rum.

GBL

jt stumbler

Proof that anyone can justify anything.

RunningMan

Well, there are many non-christian elements in the Christmas celebration, yet Christians observe them.

The beauty about being an atheist is that I can do any damn thing I want. I wouldn't hesitate to participate in a Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Budhist, or Pagan ritual. I find them interesting from an anthropological point of view, and from the point of view of bonding with fellow humans by participating in life.

I consider my celebrating Christmas to be much like participating in a native sweat lodge - Interesting, informative, perhaps fun.

Is Christmas for Atheists?

Share this