For fellow atheists, how do you regard Christmas?

For fellow atheists, how do you regard Christmas? - Printable Version

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For fellow atheists, how do you regard Christmas? - Yonosa - 2010-12-24

No trolling here, this is for fellow atheist RTKers.

Do you celebrate the pagan originated holiday of Christmas? and if not why not?, if so, how do you rationalize it?

My Answer:
I celebrate it because I usually need new electronic gadgets due to the planned obsolescence necessitated by the monetary system. So therefore I trade presents with people instead of just buying stuff for myself, somewhat becoming a pawn of the rampant and wasteful consumerism which is not only based on an infinite growth paradigm on a finite planet, but also leads to gross waste of resources and a caste system which allows people to starve because of lack of purchasing power while the stores remain full of food. I have no religious affiliation and Christmas is just a wasteful "lets make a trade day" to me, which might as well be everyone buy themselves a bunch of stuff, except in the cases where one gives presents of greater wealth in which case one party would "benefit". I rationalize my consumerism on this day mainly in what my new electronic devices allow me to do, because when it comes to gifts I'm all about functionality, and hopefully with better technology I can continue to increase my knowledge on a broad range of topics more efficiently while at the same time working hard to promote my local chapter of The ZEITGEIST MOVEMENT; the name of the group that promotes The Venus Project), in order to reach a point where more people can see the obsolescence of our current social organization. ( EDIT: for people who don't know about TZM or TVP cause I keep forgetting not everyone does, here; http://www.thevenusproject.com/the-venus-project-introduction/faq ).

Ok, How about you guys?

Also refrain from commenting on other people's reasons, let's keep it to sharing our own reasons for doing or not doing so.

Edit: Haha, yeah, Happy Boxing Day; didn't even know there was such a thing until the last episode of The Cleveland Show, which took boxing day quite literally if anyone watched haha.

For fellow atheists, how do you regard Christmas? - Dustin_Calgary - 2010-12-24

Christmas is 95% Secularized now. Yes it may have had pagan roots, but the reason we celebrate has nothing to do it's origins.

This is perhaps mostly due to over commercialization of the season to generate revenue for all the companies that can get in on it, and Christmas has been the holiday that stuck the most. The idea of the otherwise most depressing time of year now being full of festivity, gift giving and family can draw a huge crowd as opposed to holidays like thanksgiving, basically a meal, valentines, chocolate and love, or easter, chocolate and eggs.

I choose to celebrate Christmas in all it's secular glory avoiding what I can for any religious references. I buy a few gifts for my kids, get them to take santa pictures, and enjoy a meal with direct family.

If Christmas shows are on I will allow my kids to watch the ones that reference santa, reindeer, elves etc. but I won't sit them down to watch nativity, little drummer boy, anything with hard religious messages.

I don't buy gifts for anyone except my kids and my parents. I have the opinion that Christmas tends to be one of the biggest wastes of money of the year. Sure I'll make sure my kids are happy with what they receive, but the buck stops there. I haven't put lights up, I have a small fake tree and a couple stockings. If I didn't have kids I probably wouldn't even bother with those.

I guess the main reason for celebrating is so that the kids get to enjoy the exciting parts of the season. I'd have hated it if I didn't get gifts at christmas when 95% of my friends did, just because my parents were too against the religious roots of the holiday despite it being so commercial and secularized anyways.

If Christmas wasn't so secular and commercial, it would be boring, it would be like passover, good friday, just another observance. Keep this in mind the next time someone complains that their holiday is getting "overshadowed" by the non-religious components of the holiday. If it weren't for all this nobody would even care.

That being said SEASONS GREETINGS Smile

For fellow atheists, how do you regard Christmas? - bladethecoder - 2010-12-24

My family did Christmas when I was a child, but we stopped a few years back. We take advantage of the reduced-price pudding, mince pies and stollen into January.

For fellow atheists, how do you regard Christmas? - Rina - 2010-12-24

I'm atheist and only found out that christmas had something to do with religion a few years back, lol.

I celebrate it because...just because. Its always celebrated so why should we stop? And new gadgets/books/games/clothes/etc are always welcome Big Grin

For fellow atheists, how do you regard Christmas? - Dustin_Calgary - 2010-12-24

CarolinaCG Wrote:I'm atheist and only found out that christmas had something to do with religion a few years back, lol.

I celebrate it because...just because. Its always celebrated so why should we stop? And new gadgets/books/games/clothes/etc are always welcome

I like that, why should the religious get all the good holidays to themselves right? Just because we don't agree with the religious aspects doesn't mean we can't have fun Big Grin

For fellow atheists, how do you regard Christmas? - Whatsifsowhatsit - 2010-12-24

I'm also an atheist, but I never really thought about Christmas and whether to celebrate it too much - to me, it's not so much about the religious background of the party as it is about the party itself. It's just cosy having a prettily decorated tree in the house, playing card games on Christmas Eve and having extra nice dinners (in our family we don't exchange gifts at Christmas though - as a Dutch family we have Sinterklaas instead, or we used to, we don't really do much about that anymore either nowadays).

So basically, it's just fun - I don't feel like you need to rationalize it or justify it somehow if you're not religious.

PS - Merry Christmas everybody Smile

For fellow atheists, how do you regard Christmas? - Asriel - 2010-12-24

I'm not religious. I'm not so much an atheist...How about an "apathist" full of apathy, and a lack of care about whether there is a higher power.

The meaning of my Christmas is getting together with people you love, spending time with each other, reconnecting after so long (even with Skype, Facebook, etc... it's still better to be in person). Presents should be more than consumer products given to someone because they asked for it. If you just buy this and that electronic device, you're missing the point. If you know the person well enough, you should know what they would like.

Plus, we've been doing it for so long, why stop? If we went back far enough, presents would be handmade gifts, food, etc.. That's even more thoughtful than buying things. Nowadays it kind of seems "cheap," unless it's something impressive, and I think that's a shame...

For fellow atheists, how do you regard Christmas? - Dustin_Calgary - 2010-12-24

Asriel Wrote:I'm not religious. I'm not so much an atheist...How about an "apathist" full of apathy, and a lack of care about whether there is a higher power.

From a proper definition, if you haven't accepted a god claim and actually believe in the god being claimed, you're an atheist in regards to the particular god. "Atheists" simply have not accepted any particular god claim as true, whether or not they care if it's the case or not.

I just like to make sure everyone is up to date on their terms. Big Grin

What you decide to call yourself is of course your own business Smile

I am agnostic atheist. I don't accept a god claim, but know that it's possible to have one without us knowing about it. All of the god claims I have been exposed to however are verifiably false based on the claims made.

For fellow atheists, how do you regard Christmas? - caivano - 2010-12-24

I'm a big Christmas fan but its not religious for me at all it's about getting together with the family, presents, christmas dinner and crap movies Big Grin

I dig all the stuff about Jesus, angels, carols, etc too tbh but consider it a story rather than something to be taken seriously (no offense believers)

For fellow atheists, how do you regard Christmas? - Jaunty - 2010-12-24

Having been raised with it, I love Christmas probably just as much now as before I had really thought about religion seriously. I'm atheist in the sense of not having any belief in a god (raised Catholic though, hah!), rather than professing a belief in the the non-existence of any god. I'm fascinated by religion and would say I feel about any god the way the average person feels about Thor Wink

To me it's a holiday where I get to come back home and see my family and old friends from my hometown. I enjoy the tradition of gift-giving, decorating our house, watching Christmas movies, reading Calvin & Hobbes, and see nothing weird with non-Christians enjoying these things too. Christmas in America has gotten to the point where it's so secularized that it seems the only people who don't celebrate it are those who are in other religions.

For fellow atheists, how do you regard Christmas? - bizarrojosh - 2010-12-24

Merry Christmas from Japan!

I don't know how to classify my belief system other than that "philosophically Confucian" is probably the closest I can get, so since I might not be the ingroup of this thread you can disregard my opions.

When we talk about the "real meaning" of the season we always make an absolute claim which is neither true nor false in the absolute sense. The proof of this is that each of us is projecting meaning onto the holiday and we all say "it means this for me" or "it means this for my group" or whatever. Are each of us wrong when we make these truth claims? No, we aren't because IT MEANS THAT FOR US and at the same time there is discrepancy between peoples. So in someway it is verifiable, and yet the meaning can never really be reached only experienced by each member and we as a group of people, who celebrate this holiday all say we celebrate christmas which is true yet different from the way others do it.

So that is just to say, yes I celebrate it, no I don't celebrate a god while I celebrate it. Merry Christmas. Or merry Xmas. Whichever.

For fellow atheists, how do you regard Christmas? - vonPeterhof - 2010-12-25

Even though Christmas here in Russia is a much more overtly religious holiday than it is in the West, my atheist family celebrates it anyway, except for the whole All-Night Vigil thing. I think it might be a relic of the Soviet days, when Christian (and recycled pagan) holidays were suppressed and many members of the intelligentsia celebrated it as an act of defiance. Think of it as a Lutheran or Catholic family celebrating Rosh Hashanah in Nazi Germany just to defy the Nazis... and then continuing to celebrate it out of habit even twenty years after their downfall.
Also, Christmas here is not commercialized at all. Just heavily alcoholized, like everything else Smile

New Year, on the other hand...

For fellow atheists, how do you regard Christmas? - thecite - 2010-12-25

Indifferently; time to gather with family and celebrate, nothing more.
I disagree with rampant consumerism, but I'm not a big fan of TZM.

Boxing day's pretty big here in Australia. A, because it's a public holiday and B, because the boxing day test series of cricket is on, which captivates a great portion of the nation.

For fellow atheists, how do you regard Christmas? - Yonosa - 2010-12-25

"I disagree with rampant consumerism"? haha, how? nevermind though, since you will just rationalize it probably, but I think its pretty evident to most people.

For fellow atheists, how do you regard Christmas? - bodhisamaya - 2010-12-25

Dictionaries have varied, often leveled, definitions of atheism. How many superhero powers are required to meet this club's definition of "god"? I often omit definite articles in my sentences. I might qualify as an atheist.

For fellow atheists, how do you regard Christmas? - buonaparte - 2010-12-25

People will believe anything. They no longer believe in Zeus, Athena or Hercules. But they still believe in Jehovah/Jahveh, Allah, saints or Krishna. And they derive some sense of superiority from lying to tell The Truth. What's even more puzzling, they believe that some local pope, mulla or emperor knows best about what's good for you.

My ethics are simple:
Don't harm, if possible.
Help, if possible.

I believe in friendship, thinking, learning, and creating beauty.

This is what my cousin believes:

My cousin Wrote:I'm a Christian, too.
At the beginning there was no beginning. Timeless nothingness, that was all there was - an awful place to be. One sunny day, Amaterasu decided to do something about nothing - she created herself. She took my granny's mirror and looked at herself, but she didn't like what she saw - not sexy enough, you see - so she re-created herself. This time it took her a little bit longer, not seven seconds but seven minutes. Seven minutes is a hell of a lot of time for a goddess to create anything.

Amaterasu first created HERself, then she created the Universe, and then she created IMOUTO who was damn bored and decided to have some premarital sex with her boyfriend, Jesus. Their union lasted ten thousand solar years. Their children are all polyglots - the greatest of them all is Ziad Fazah, gods bless his name.

For fellow atheists, how do you regard Christmas? - jettyke - 2010-12-25

buonaparte Wrote:I believe in friendship, thinking, learning, and creating beauty.

Just have to say that you're so right. These are exactly the things I believe in Smile

For fellow atheists, how do you regard Christmas? - Blahah - 2010-12-25

Dustin_Calgary Wrote:From a proper definition, if you haven't accepted a god claim and actually believe in the god being claimed, you're an atheist in regards to the particular god. "Atheists" simply have not accepted any particular god claim as true, whether or not they care if it's the case or not.

I assume you meant "don't actually believe in the god being claimed".

That's an unusual definition of atheist, and is usually given as a sub-class called implicit atheism. Atheism isn't that cut-and-dry, at least not in the modern complex definitions (see the 'concepts' heading of the Wikipedia atheism series.

I am agnostic explicit atheist: I reject all god concepts in my approach to everyday life, although I accept that there is a possibility (so infinitesimally small as to be irrelevant) that any given god exists.

My ethics are similar to buonaparte's: help when you can, do as little harm as possible; think, learn, understand, share.

As for christmas, our family celebrates it in a completely secular way with decorating, presents, lots of family meals and gatherings, running from early December to twelfth night (which is a Christian celebration, but for us is just a traditional day we have turned into a family celebration with our own strange traditions like a swiss cheese fondue dinner and a murder mystery game with full costume!! Oh, and you have to solve a series of riddles to find presents, which are hidden around the house).

For fellow atheists, how do you regard Christmas? - thecite - 2010-12-25

Yonosa Wrote:"I disagree with rampant consumerism"? haha, how? nevermind though, since you will just rationalize it probably, but I think its pretty evident to most people.

Pretty much why you'd expect: waste of resources and money, can promote selfishness/ obsession with trivial possessions you don't need.

For fellow atheists, how do you regard Christmas? - Blahah - 2010-12-25

thecite Wrote:
Yonosa Wrote:"I disagree with rampant consumerism"? haha, how? nevermind though, since you will just rationalize it probably, but I think its pretty evident to most people.
Pretty much why you'd expect: waste of resources and money, can promote selfishness/ obsession with trivial possessions you don't need.

I think Yonosa thought you meant that you don't think Christmas involves rampant consumerism, whereas you were actually saying that you dislike rampant consumerism.

For fellow atheists, how do you regard Christmas? - thecite - 2010-12-25

Ah, gotcha.

Edit: I don't mind giving/ receiving a small gift or two at Christmas as a token of goodwill, I just don't like going over the top.

For fellow atheists, how do you regard Christmas? - Tzadeck - 2010-12-25

I live in Japan, and even though it's just been three years, Christmas seems very secular to me now. Thus, I have no problem celebrating it however.

Not to mention, all religious things seem pretty secular in Japan. When I first came here I wouldn't ring the bell and bow at Shinto shrines and the like, because I know I don't believe in any of it. But Japanese people generally don't believe in it, and they do it anyway. And now so do I.

The only religious thing I've ever seen in Japan that actually feels religious is prayer at Souka Gakkai meetings (which I've gone to--it's a long story).

Anyway, the way I look at religion is Japan is that most of the Japanese just like ceremony, and it doesn't really have anything to do with metaphysical beliefs. So participating in ceremony in Japan does not actually have anything to do with believing in God or Gods or not, so you can basically do whatever without worrying over your own convictions about whether or not any of it is true.

For fellow atheists, how do you regard Christmas? - liosama - 2010-12-25

All religions are ceremonial in one way or another. There are those who actually believe that whatever ceremony they're doing is beneficial for themselves/whatever god(s) they believe in, most however don't and do it simply as a part of culture/habit, this is the path I I tend to see people of all races heading towards these days, and thank god for that.

For fellow atheists, how do you regard Christmas? - buonaparte - 2010-12-25

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For fellow atheists, how do you regard Christmas? - Dustin_Calgary - 2010-12-25

Blahah Wrote:
Dustin_Calgary Wrote:From a proper definition, if you haven't accepted a god claim and actually believe in the god being claimed, you're an atheist in regards to the particular god. "Atheists" simply have not accepted any particular god claim as true, whether or not they care if it's the case or not.
I assume you meant "don't actually believe in the god being claimed".

I could Have written this better ^_^

Blahah Wrote:That's an unusual definition of atheist, and is usually given as a sub-class called implicit atheism. Atheism isn't that cut-and-dry, at least not in the modern complex definitions (see the 'concepts' heading of the Wikipedia atheism series.

I was taking the softest definition of Atheism, and everything stronger still qualifies. As long as you don't accept the god claim then you belong somewhere in the Atheism category. Implicit, explicit, strong weak, none have accepted a god claim as true, whether it's because they've outright refute it, or simply have not accepted it to be true. To be a theist, you have an active belief in a God. To be an atheist you lack that active belief, wherever else you may fall on the scale.