The Weird and The Wacky Meet

Where YouBetIAm comes to write….

Atheists and Christmas

Why Not Generic Winter Holiday Number Twelve?

                 Ever since I was a little girl, my favorite part of the holiday season was making a list of all my family members and carefully planning what to buy each of them.  I would save my babysitting money for months and try to get each of them something they would really enjoy.  A lot has changed since then but what remains the same is my motive: I love to give.

                 I was raised in a devout Christian home.  On Christmas Eve, my father would read us one of the stories of Jesus’ birth from the Bible, and there were fights over who got to set up the nativity scene.  It was all part and parcel of my parents’ religiosity.  As I grew older, I left those beliefs behind and very consciously got rid of my faith.

                 I’m not a Christian anymore; I’m an atheist.  I’ve embraced secular humanism, a philosophy that promotes human values without any specific regard to religious doctrine.  This was not an easy decision to come to, nor was it for any of the usual assumed reasons attributed to “losing” one’s faith.  I just felt religion wasn’t true, and I couldn’t be a part of it.

                 Looking back, it’s not something I regret; I’m quite proud of my beliefs, and do not hide them to fit in.  Yet I still embrace the idea of Christmas, because it’s by far my favorite holiday.

                 I don’t see Christians as owning Christmas.  We can all joke like Bart Simpson who said, “Christmas is the time of year when people of all faiths gather together to worship Jesus Christ.”  However, somewhat of the opposite is true.  Winter is the time of year where all people gather together in family and friendship to give, because this is the time of year when people most need it.  Christmas is just one more winter holiday. 

                 It is seen by many Christians as a celebration of the birth of Christ, but it’s not at all clear what Jesus’ birthday might have been, with early Christians placing it on a number of dates, including May 20th and January 6th^.. According to Wikipedia.com, there are many competing explanations for where the December 25th date came from, but we do know that it didn’t show up for a few hundred years after Jesus, around 386 CE, when St. John Chrysostom suggested that all Christians celebrate on this particular day.

Moreover, Christmas coincides with a number of non-Christian winter holidays that mark the Winter Solstice, some of which predate Christianity.  These include the Jewish Hanukah, the Roman festivals of Sol Invictus and Saturnalia, the Nordic Yule, the African-American Kwanzaa, the Humanist HumanLight, and the Chinese Dong Zhi Festival, not to mention the medieval Christian Feast of Fools.

                 There is extensive borrowing among these various celebrations, with much of what we associate with Christianity, such as “the Christmas tree, holly, the Christmas ham, the Yule Log, and the giving of presents,” [Need to attribute, but how!] originating in European pagan celebrations.  Non-Christian winter holidays have likewise borrowed many historically Christian elements, and some have been explicitly created as alternatives to Christmas.

                 All of this mixing has made it hard to single out Christmas from other holidays celebrated around that time of year.  This has led some conservative Christian denominations to reject Christmas as non-Christian, refusing to celebrate it because they feel it’s not sanctioned by the Bible and is really just a pagan holiday.  They have something of a point, since Christmas has outgrown its Christian roots and is now celebrated as a secular holiday all over the world, even in places like Japan, where there are few Christians.

                 So when people ask me how I can celebrate Christmas if I’m not Christian, I ask them how the world celebrates it, because if it ever was a purely Christian holiday, it no longer is.  This leads to another question, which is why, with so many roughly equivalent winter holidays to choose from, I still celebrate it as Christmas, and not Winter Solstice, HumanLight or Generic Winter Holiday Number Twelve?

                 The best answer I can come up with is that I was raised that way.  One of the things I’ve learned as I’ve grown older is that tradition is important, but so is rejecting tradition when it’s unhealthy or harmful.  For me, celebrating a secular Christmas strikes this balance.

                 Christmas, to me, is all about giving and coming together as human beings and as family.  If people in the past chose what holiday to celebrate, why can’t I do it today?  I’m proud of my heritage, and I’m proud that I’ve rejected parts of it, so I’ll continue to celebrate Christmas, and not worry about being Christian.

Copyright 2004

Christmas Trees Are Really Pagan Trees

By Amanda Evans

Date: 12/16/04