• Security incident: ISF was recently accessed by intruders. Please change your password, and change it anywhere else you used it. Read more

Do you Reject the Holidays as an Atheist?

Safe-Keeper said:
I will celebrate Christmas (or rather Yule;)) this year, as every year. Can't refrain from celebrating it when my family does. Also, if Christians could start celebrating Yule when it had nothing to do with their beliefs, then so can I.
Click to expand...
It's the season for a reason!
 
Christmas is the biggest holiday for capitalists so of course it is one of my favorites. I love to shop, mostly at thrift stores which is like treasure hunting.
 
Agular said:
That's pretty cool, but that's not an easy choice as you discovered. I guess it depends on whether the kids "get it" and if they are comfortable enough to explain what they did to their peers.
Click to expand...

The simple facts are: a) kids want to do what's fun. b) -- and this is what parents often fail to see -- kids' enjoyment of something is not predicated on how many times you have done it before. You may have done it dozens of times, you may react to the thought of it with "Already? Oh no not again", but if the kids think it's fun that is what they want to do. They are looking forward to it, and will be disappointed and frustrated if you try and persuade them that something else will be better.

(Still mentally grousing over the time my mother tried to persuade me and my brother -- ages thirteen and ten -- that attending an outdoor performance of The Taming of the Shrew would be lots, lots more fun a way to spend Independence Day than going to see some dumb boring old fireworks!)
 
truethat said:
But I'm wondering about the implications of my desire to celebrate a holiday with my family that sort of goes against the traditions I am building for myself.
Click to expand...
Submit to your desires and make a tradition of celebrating your family with them once a year.

I suggest late December is a good time to do this as many other people take a holiday around then and the implications arising from a few days off work are lessened.
 
It's easier to forego Christmas over here - it's just a long weekend and an excuse to party for the most part. But I'll be damned if I will, even being a confirmed atheist. "I'm celebrating for my kid..." Well, for me and my own concept of "Christmas memories" but using the kid as an excuse.

If you want to do something for the homeless or the elderly or the needy, it doesn't have to replace Christmas unless you're making a real CHRISTIAN thing of it and all into sacrifice and hair shirts and stuff. July's a pretty good time to teach your kids those lessons, I reckon.

For many years, whenever we were in NYC for the holidays (which was generally Thanksgiving and not Christmas), we'd do our own celebrations and feasting and whatever, but we'd give the morning over to working the volunteer soup kitchen at one of the local help groups (run out of a church, egad!) on the Lower East Side.

In short - it doesn't have to be an either/or thing. The kids can get their goodies and mom and dad and grandma and grampa and uncles and aunties can have their feasts and get drunk and insult each other.... AND YOU CAN GO OUT AND DO SOMETHING USEFUL OR GOOD, SEPARATELY.


No reason to make the kids sacrifice. Kids are supposed to be acquisitive (if not greedy) - it's part of what being a kid is all about.
 
I like a tree, I like to give and receive gifts, I like getting together with family and having Grandma drink me under the table, I like turkey, chestnuts, expensive cheese and festive toilet roll.

I tried a Xmas not having these, since I felt it conflicted with my beliefs... or lack thereof. But I was miserable, I like these things and others. And I'll be damned if I can figure out where festive toilet roll is religious, but it has happy childhood memories for me.

So I'll be singing deck the halls with boughs of holly, drinking homemade baileys and eating my boozy fruit cake (at last inhalation you could become intoxicated from fumes alone) whilst reading Richard Dawkins. Ho Ho Ho!
 
I'll spend dec 24 to 29 in Las Vegas, so i can have decorations (I can't compete with Bellagio's observatory decoration), a xmas tree (in front of Caesars palace), xmas lunch or dinner (depends when i can sleep) at Wynn's and my wife and I can avoid all our relatives, who would destroy like a grinch all our fun. I promised this to my wife on our return trip from my family on dec 25, 2008. And a promise is a promise.
 
Last edited:
We just put up our Christmas tree today.

I celebrate Christmas without the Christ.

Festivus? I still just call it Christmas out of habit though.
 
I'm an atheist, and I LOVE Christmas! So much fun! Cookies! Ornaments! Lights! Presents! Songs (yes, even a few religious ones, 'cause even if I don't believe I love the tune)! Hooray!
 
Jorghnassen said:
Being a lapsed Catholic I can at least "identify" with those (more likely I'm just the kind of guy who believes music died in 1827.... the songs about the holiday season and Santa and the celebration itself are more recent and thus usually much worse).
Click to expand...
Boy, am I with you on that. I have a collection of Christmas music that rivals many people's everyday music collections, and very, very little of it is from the 20th C., and what I do have is mostly derivative of earlier times anyway.

Randfan mentioned getting rid of nativity scenes. I haven't even gone that far; I've got a couple small ones that I still use. To me they're just mythological dioramas that I view as being no different than my display of stuffed figures of Yukon Cornelius, the Abominable Snowman, Rudolph, Sam, and the Misfit Toys.
 
I think I would enjoy Christmas a lot more if it was, say, a week every two or three years, instead of a full month every year.
 
Psi Baba said:
Boy, am I with you on that. I have a collection of Christmas music that rivals many people's everyday music collections, and very, very little of it is from the 20th C., and what I do have is mostly derivative of earlier times anyway.

Randfan mentioned getting rid of nativity scenes. I haven't even gone that far; I've got a couple small ones that I still use. To me they're just mythological dioramas that I view as being no different than my display of stuffed figures of Yukon Cornelius, the Abominable Snowman, Rudolph, Sam, and the Misfit Toys.
Click to expand...
:) Live and let live. Cool.
 
Anything that will give you a few days off work has to be cool.
 
I celebrate as it is supposed to be celebrated: as the Winter Solstice. At least that is a verifiable event which occurs annually. Same basic ceremonies that far preceeded xtian coopting can be applied (yule logs, evergreens, gift giving, eating, gatherings, singing, drinking, merriment). You just don't need to make any attributions to some mythological event that never happened 2000 years ago.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

ISF - Join now!

Every member here is approved by hand. No bots, no spam, just people who care about evidence and honest debate.

Membership is free!

Create your free account

Back
Top Bottom