With all the Christmas posts, I thought readers might find this of interest: The Grinch Delusion: An Atheist Can Believe in Christmas. The fact is that religious traditions are a part of human culture, and they interact with ostensibly non-religious parts of human culture. To extirpate all that is religious from one’s life is to extirpate human culture. As it is, a holiday like Christmas is a complex compound of many disparate strands and affinities. There was a War Against Christmas during the Cromwellian interregnum because of the association of the holiday with “Papism.” Of course the War failed because Christmas is not fundamentally Catholic or Protestant; winter festivals have likely been part of European history since the rise of agriculture with its particularly seasonal rhythms (many of the holiday traditions, such as Christmas cookies, predate the arrival of Christianity to northern Europe and the Christian Church occasionally attempted to suppress them during the early medieval period). Note that even the Christmas-skeptic quoted in the above article is selective about his aversion to festivity with a religious tint:
Even hardliners like David Silverman, the national spokesman for American Atheists, the group founded by Madalyn Murray O’Hair, find it difficult. Many of Mr. Silverman’s fellow atheists celebrate the Winter Solstice, which occurs Thursday at 7:22 p.m. Eastern Time, or HumanLight, a humanist event created in 2001 by a group of New Jersey residents and observed this coming Saturday. But not Mr. Silverman, who feels that any such doings around Christmastime are suspect. “There’s such a Christian flavor to it,” he said of the season, “that it’s just not to my taste.”
But he added that, as with his mother’s Passover, some seasonal participation is just too hard to avoid.
Besides, he admitted, “I do like to go to the parties.”
Since leaving religion (I’m now agnostic) I’ve called myself “The Merry Christmas Atheist” (because atheist just sounds better). What’s not to like about Christmas? So little of it is religious anymore anyway, and it’s a lovely celebration. Most of the trappings aren’t Christian but a syncretism of all sort of winter festivals. Besides, I find that when I wish people Merry Christmas I generally bring smiles to people I like and only get grumbles from the few I wouldn’t like anyway.
Heavens! One might almost think that atheists are superstitious about coming into contact with anything remotely resonant of religion. But never fear, Richard Dawkins is here to relieve our anxiety. The grand old Atheist, PBUH, assures us that Christmas has been rendered so utterly meaningless, that we may indulge ourselves in all manner of formerly suspect activities without fear of contamination and without apprehension about contributing to the general religious malaise. Indeed, think about striking a blow for atheism, not by posting signs, but by co-opting Christian symbols and holiday paraphenalia for your own secular purposes. Christians are in no position to complain, given their own history of usurpation!
For those of us who remain unable to savor the joy of others while remaining joyless ourselves, the celebration of Saturnalia is always appropriate, its spiritual baggage having been shed so long ago, that there remains no empirical evidence of its existence. Not that there was ever any empirical evidence of spirituality to begin with, mind you. The mid-winter solstice has a scientific seal of approval, so relax and let the merriment commence!
I am an atheist, but I respect Christian traditions and celebrations because they are part of the culture that formed me. Calling it a “solstice party” is idiotic — replacing the Christianity one doesn’t believe in with a bogus paganism one doesn’t believe in either.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
I can’t wait for Easter postings and comments on this blog!
Humans like to party. Any reason will do. Did anyone observe Festivus yesterday?
Indeed, think about striking a blow for atheism, not by posting signs, but by co-opting Christian symbols and holiday paraphenalia for your own secular purposes.
Christmas has been predominantly secular in ritual for most people for a while now, so this is a moot point.
“Christmas has been predominantly secular in ritual for most people for a while now, so this is a moot point.”
Exactly. This, and most of the other comments illustrate one of the many differences between the secular right and the secular left. Many of us on the right are unreligious, but not hostile to religion & religious traditions. As an atheist, I find the idea that I shouldn’t celebrate Christmas because of its “religious tint” completely ridiculous.
“Exactly. This, and most of the other comments illustrate one of the many differences between the secular right and the secular left. Many of us on the right are unreligious, but not hostile to religion & religious traditions. As an atheist, I find the idea that I shouldn’t celebrate Christmas because of its “religious tint” completely ridiculous.”
I don’t see how this reflects on the left-right issue. None of my athiest lefty friends are hostile to religion or religious tradition, so long as it is not the government that is promoting or underwriting it. All of them celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday and most don’t care if people worship squirrels, so long as the government isn’t involved.
I would agree that the government shouldn’t be sending out rebate checks to people who go to church, but allowing a crèche in the public square is not “underwriting.”
It always seems to me that some people who describe themselves as atheists believe in some sort of talisman like power of dolls of baby Jesus at Christmas. The dolls aren’t going to reach out and convert someone to Christianity. The only meaning it has is in the head of the person who views it, so it shouldn’t be such a big deal to have these sort of displays.
Grant,
I guess I was overgeneralizing. But I find that most atheists hostile to religion, and particularly toward Christianity, tend to be on the left.
Why on earth would anyone bother to celebrate the solstice? It’s just a day when the earth’s angular momentum vector points in a certain direction.
And why not celebrate Christmas? It’s not as if there’s an Atheist Hell that you go to for worshipping false idols.
Perhaps a large subset of people who call themselves atheists are really just members of some as-yet-unorganized religion that is antithetical to Christianity.
David C: This blog appears to be aimed at the exceptions to that rule.
I’m glad it’s here.
Let me join with the fellow atheists here who love Christmas. I am also a supporter of the “Merry Christmas” form of greeting (because it is traditional and has a nice ring to it) rather than the upstart, milquetoast sound of “happy holidays”.
I would go even further. My favorite movies are often Christmas themed, and of those, lean more towards the Christian than the purely secular. “Holiday Inn” and “White Christmas” are fun and traditional but “The Bishop’s Wife” and “It’s a Wonderful Life” with their angelic overtones are somehow more authentic and touching to me. I don’t believe in angels, of course, and probably most of the Christians who view these movies don’t either (anymore than they believe in wizards and orcs). And of course, Alistair Sim’s “Christmas Carol”, which has ghosts in it, is another favorite, that never fails to get the old waterworks going.
I think those who atheists who argue that they support Christmas because it is now entirely secular are not really telling the truth.
There is a part of religion, the poetic and universally spiritual, that atheists respond to just as much as the religious do. I would argue in fact that some atheists may actually experience what is truly of value in religion as opposed to the type of Christian who places more importance on “belief” in this or that supernatural occurrence.
The Christmas phrase “peace on earth, goodwill toward men” has great emotive power for me and the true spirit of Christmas, the old traditions, the gathering together again of the family and the remembrance of absent friends – that is what appeals to me about Christmas. God bless us every one.
There is in fact a great deal of culture that is not founded in religion, and much that was once religious but now is not.
I don’t know anyone who objects to celebrating Halloween because it originated with rituals meant to pacify the spirits of the dead. I fail to see why someone should eschew the decorating and gift-giving of Christmas merely because it’s associated with Christianity. People have always had celebrations around this time of year in wintery regions. Some religious holidays were moved here to take advantage of that fact, and some religious holidays have been used as an excuse to celebrate. But there’s nothing religious about the partying itself.
December the 25th is the day that commemorates the birthday of arguably the most important man who ever lived, the man whose life and works contributed perhaps more than any other to human knowledge, progress, and understanding. I can think of no greater man that I wish to honor on this day that this man.
He was born 25 December 1642 in the old style calender, then in use in England.
So on this December 25th I will say, as is my wont,
On the 366th birthday of Isaac Newton,
Happy Newtonmas, secular humans.
David Hume:
“Christmas has been predominantly secular in ritual for most people for a while now, so this is a moot point.”
The idea that commercial industry has supplanted religious observance and ritual meaning in the same fashion that Christianity once co-opted Natalis Sol Invictus strikes me as a comforting conceit. While shopping has certainly become “the reason for the season in the minds of some,” it’s a worldly activity, not a competing ideology. Per Grinch, the idea that “an atheist can believe in Christmas,” because Christmas has no meaning seems a bizarre message, notwithstanding the obvious irony, for folks who enshrine reason above all else, doesn’t it?
Dawkins struck me as someone couldn’t possibly allow himself to be seen as bowing to the politically correct with a “Happy Holidays,” and who would rather try to explain away his “Merry Christmas” as a content neutral greeting on a formerly religious holiday rather than admit that he just didn’t want to be left out in the atheist cold. Does anyone really think he was celebrating consumerism? And who wants to celebrate the solstice alone? Isn’t silently casting one’s own “Merry Christmas” as “Happy Saturnalia” in order to come along for the ride something akin to a ladylike Victorian trying to think about the draperies during sex? I’m all for everyone joining in on whatever basis they choose; I’m just commenting on what seems to be a compulsive need to rationalize away any hint of intellectual compromise.
For competing ideologies, I’d look to the evolution of Unitarianism for an example. The more “tolerant” it became religiously, the less tolerant it grew politically. Social justice is now its creed, and oddly enough, Jesus himself would not likely be a welcome congregant. In Unitarian fellowships outside of the Northeast, you’ll often find a preponderance of refugees from other religious denominations who are noticeably hostile to the trappings of Christianity. I was amused when a friend who volunteered as a Unitarian Sunday School teacher once proudly announced that she had gotten through the entire Easter lesson without mentioning Jesus at all. Yet, while there is no shortage of venues for the pursuit of a greater social good, these folks still want to belong to a church, where they sing re-written, politically correct hymns and observe rituals culled from a multi-culti smorgasbord of ostensibly fumigated alternatives. And they leave, feeling enriched.
Materiality and spirituality are simply two different things. It seems passing strange to me that while atheists seem to embrace the idea of superstition as a driver in the human psyche, they routinely deny the existence of spiritual imperatives. As even this nascent tribe suggests, almost everyone eventually wants in from the cold. There are plenty of Christians among scientists, past and present, but not all of them adopt science and reason as the alternative to religion, proclaim it to be intellectually superior to a believer’s faith, and deny the possibility of a middle road or shades of religious gray. Is is possible that what atheists really can’t tolerate is ambiguity? Agnosticism won’t suffice! It is only when secularism becomes ideology that Christmas cannot be both secular and religious, material and spiritual, yet most people who celebrate it would tell you that it is.
Materiality and spirituality are simply two different things.
False. The two intersect. All phenomena have material antecedents.
It seems passing strange to me that while atheists seem to embrace the idea of superstition as a driver in the human psyche, they routinely deny the existence of spiritual imperatives. As even this nascent tribe suggests, almost everyone eventually wants in from the cold. There are plenty of Christians among scientists, past and present, but not all of them adopt science and reason as the alternative to religion, proclaim it to be intellectually superior to a believer’s faith, and deny the possibility of a middle road or shades of religious gray. Is is possible that what atheists really can’t tolerate is ambiguity? Agnosticism won’t suffice! It is only when secularism becomes ideology that Christmas cannot be both secular and religious, material and spiritual, yet most people who celebrate it would tell you that it is.
Blah, blah, blah. Who are you talking to? And what are you talking about? I don’t even avow most of the things you are attributing to me so perhaps you should comment on another posters’ whose mindset you more accurately divine.
I was commenting on your remark, the pieces you posted, the comments I’ve been reading here, and my own observations from watching people of faith arguing both with each other and with atheists over an extended period of time. I’m very sorry to have given the impression that I was launching a personal attack or if my first post did not strike a sufficiently light note to entertain. I am also taken aback that a post I took considerable care in writing would elicit nothing but a deliberately insulting dismissal. It seemed on topic to me, but If you see no redeeming value in my comment and cannot tolerate being misunderstood, then I am, indeed, posting in the wrong author’s thread.
And of course Christians borrowed many of the “traditional” Christmas attributes (e.g., the time of year, the tree) from other religions.
Is is possible that what atheists really can’t tolerate is ambiguity?
Oh, that must be it! That must be why atheists are the ones who believe in a magic sky man who has all the answers and is responsible for every natural phenomenon we don’t currently understand.
Yes! Except the exact opposite.
I’ve been an atheist my entire life and Christmas has never sat well with me. I love Thanksgiving. To me its about family and celebrating all the things that have gone well in the past year. I can appreciate Christmas on that level as well. Its great to get all the relatives together and to show your love for each other by spending time together and giving each other gifts. My sister and I took her daughter to see the Christmas special at Rockefeller Center one year and part of it contained a nativity scene. In the manger they had a bright shining light. My niece asked her mom what it was and my sister described it as “God when he was a baby”. My niece’s eyes lit up with wonderment. It was at that moment she realized why Christmas was so important. This was the birth of God made flesh through Jesus Christ, our lord and savior. It made me sad in a weird way. I love Christmas as a time to celebrate and appreciate family and good will towards others. I think that is a great message. I think any sort of idol worship detracts from that. The holiday turns into a celebration of the supernatural and all you can’t control. It becomes the “Christmas Miracle”, the magic of Christmas, angels changing the course of events here on earth (almost every sitcom will have some mysterious supernatural and unexplainable mystery happen during this time of year).
I don’t to celebrate the hope that some supernatural force may come down and help some one in need of help. I want to foster the idea that we can help ourselves and each other through good will and mutual respect and understanding. I don’t like anything that says we can sit back and wait for a God to fix these problems for us. That God will ensure that what is right will happen.
I’m fine with Santa because that is a myth of the supernatural we all know is BS, but its fun for kids. We adults chuckle to ourselves that we can get kids to believe in something so silly, but no one seems to laugh with you when you suggest Jesus is just the Santa for adults and is just as nonsensical.
I would never do anything to prevent believers from celebrating and I always keep my mouth 100% shut during the holidays. I truly believe that everyone should be able to believe whatever they want and should be free to celebrate it openly. I can even get into the spirit and enjoy myself. All up until someone has to remind everyone that what we’re truly celebrating is God being made flesh so that man can be forgiven for his wickedness. Lets not wait around to be forgiven by a lightbulb in a manger. Lets just stop being wicked all by ourselves. We all have it within ourselves to do that and we don’t need the story of a man being tortured to death because of our own wickedness to make us better people. Although, I do understand the guilt trip. We invented the word “excruciating” to describe the pain of the crucifiction. Is it really only through the guilt of knowing you caused God (God’s son) to endure the most horrific pain imaginable that we can decide that maybe its best if we just be nicer and more understanding to each other? For me, a simple love for all of humankind is enough.
And, a little factoid. The puritans hated Christmas. That makes me almost like it. The fact that the entire country now gets sucked into an event absolutely despised by our religious forefathers here in America. Its kinda funny when you think about it.
@Nylund
The Puritans were the religious forefathers of only a part of the American population, but they did manage to score some amazing PR.
Chet:
Sure sounds like you’re talking black or white to me, with nary a hint of ambiguity.
BobN:
Actually, I believe we have the Puritans to thank for our basic system of higher eduction.
Don’t even think about making eduction jokes!
What has been missed in this discussion is that ALL judeo-christian winter religious celebrations are little more than the adoption/appropriation of a natural holiday: the winter solstice. It has probably been observed/celebrated ever since the human lineage realized that there is a day that is the shortest day in the year. From that point on, the days get longer again, hurray! Now, that probably happened before we turned into homo sapiens. It probably did not happen before then in quite such a precise fashion, down to a single day, simply because brain development had not been sufficient to count days. But, almost all living things celebrate the lenghtening days and warming weather. Sunlight is our primordial food; everything else is derived from it up (I think it should be called down) the food chain.
So, I say, the association of the winter solstice with christmas, hanuka, blah, blah, blah, is something for historians of religion to study. I just do the wonderfully animalistic thing, with a developed brain, and celebrate the solstice. And, I add my own personal winter holiday, the latests sunrise, about Jan 4 or 5 or so. In our, so called, civilized world, we are, to some extent, slaves of the clock and I love the dawn and mornings. So happy solstice and latest sunrise to all of you; may nature bring you the wonderful gifts of abundance and the self awarness to enjoy it all.
Oh for heaven’s sake, this whole controversy is ridiculous. Christmas wasn’t even a Christian holiday to begin with — it’s the Christian church’s co-option of the pagan holiday of Saturnalia. No one really knows when Christ was born, after all, and the December date was chosen for celebration partly to lure non-Christians away from their centuries old Saturnalia/Soltices celebrations — which included (pre-Christ) Yule logs, trees decorated with candles, feasts, the exchange of presents, etc.
If pagans don’t object to Christians taking over their holiday and many of their holiday customs, then why should Christians object to non-Christians doing the same? Sheesh.
I’m not sure why people are so upset about saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”. Is it really that much of an imposition to acknowledge that Jews exist? Wishing someone who celebrates Hannukah a Merry Christmas is like telling someone “Happy Birthday” on your own birthday. No harm done, but you don’t look like the most thoughtful fellow.
@Nylund
thanks for a great post. I’ve been trying to find the words for my xmas position. I just want everyone to have a nice winter holiday. Especially me. I think s clause is cool because he is supernatural and we can let it go. For some reason Christians just can’t let it go. Could I believe in Jesus the way I believe in Santa? No. Because Santa is nice. Jesus has the baggage of torture, blood rites, guilt, hell, a creator who has cursed us all and created a need for a savior. That’s nothing to celebrate. I’m having a party in Sat. 20th. It hits the Solstice mark on midnight. I don’t mind if people say merry Christmas. And Santa may fly by. Just don’t stand directly underneath when he does.