Atheists who celebrate X-mas

[Spacelord]

I'm a pretty staunch atheist, so is my dad. Doesn't stop him from getting a christmas tree and a nativity scene and the whole shebang. Also, tons of food! Gotta help him make a five(!) course dinner for the weekend soon. I don't think Christians have any business telling people of other faiths how to spend their holidays. Or anyone for that matter.

No presents though. I'm Dutch so we already have Sinterklaas. Also I'm a grown-ass man, I think I'm over presents now. That said I did get a neat bottle of premium beer from my sister... Scratch that, actually. Presents rule.

Also: we got tons of snow here! How're you foreigners doing with the christmas weather?

 

[shabobble]

They absolutely should. Like it or not, Christmas is now a secular holiday. Sure, it has religious roots, but opening presents around a tree and eating dinner with your relatives is a tradition so far removed from those roots you might as well call it something else. Same thing with Valentine's Day, that was originally a religious holiday, but now its an excuse for Hallmark to peddle disgustingly mushy greeting cards and chocolate.

 

[Alexander Cron]

Atheists are atheists because its cool to be one, just like it was at one time cool to be Christian. Anyways, Jesus was really born in April and Catholics just adopted a pagan holiday to convert more people.

 

[taciturnCandid]

Atheist and I celebrate Family and Friend Appreciation Day. Yes, it takes place on the same day as christmas and has every bit of the consumerism, but it is not named after Christ. Besides. I love the gifting idea and eggnog

 

[OManoghue]

It's pretty commercialized. Now that I'm old and don't ask for gifts it's all about seeing my family.

 

[Rewdalf]

I think they celebrate the spirit of christmas.
You know, family togetherness, time off from work, gift of giving etc...
A lot of people don't wake up on the morning of the 25th and thank the lord that god was born...

 

[Nova Helix]

Xmas is about family and cultural traditions, atleast thats what the USA Today survay says: USA Today [http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2010-12-20-unchristmasinside20_ST_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip]

 

[Fraught]

God, this is one of those threads I always see on /b/ that asks why do atheists celebrate Christmas, the birth of Jesus Christ, his fuckin', I don't know, resurrection and shit, happily giving Christians a point (or over ninethousand) and then, every time, a Santa's sackful of variations on "it was a pagan holiday" crop up.

Get over yourself, people. It was a pagan holiday, and it has never been something that was weird for atheists to celebrate.

I mean, lawd, do you think atheists hate fun? Without wasting half their bloody day on prayers that don't aid with/in anything, you'd think they'd have more time for that.

And besides, what is Christmas? No one but my religious-nut of a grandmother ever talks about any other aspect of Christmas but "RRRARGH I had to do Christmas shopping!" or "it's too dark for Christmas shopping!" or "I got X and Y their Christmas presents" or "Like, oh, my god, I got SO many Christmas presents!".
It's all about the Christmas anyway, and the general atmosphere it creates, outside's snowy, inside's warm and your family's there, you stuff yourself full to the brim and you open presents and revel in your materialistic gain.

Doesn't sound like Christianity to me (even though the Church's always been greedy as fuck, which has always confused me, but it's about what Christianity really preaches).

 

[rebus_forever]

Happy Present day?
Ive been trying Happy Jesus day this year.

 

[GraegoriHauss]

It's something to look forward to. It's something most people look forward to, anyway. I feel truly sorry for the ones who don't.

That damn simple.

 

[JediMB]

It's a Christian holiday. Regardless of what it was in the past, it currently is a Christian holiday (over-commercialized, definitely!) The thing that I don't get is why Atheists celebrate "Christ's mass" instead of say, the solstice or some other secular reason around the same time. Even Santa Claus is based off of the patron saint of Charity.

Good thing that I celebrate Jul (Yule) rather than Christmas then, eh?

And Santa Claus really is as much Tomte (a kind of gnome) as he is Saint Nick.

 

[ReverendJ]

Ok, so here's the progression, starting from the top and moving backwards...
1. The date of Christmas was moved to coincide with pagan holidays, it's common knowledge by now. Homeboy was a Pisces.
2. The pagan holiday in question was linked with the tradition of recognizing solstices.
3. Recognizing solstices was an important part in developing agriculture, as we needed a fairly precise calendar so we'd know when to plant crops. Ancient peoples were fairly obsessed with calendars.
4. Agriculture is how humanity ultimately ended up *****-slapping nature, which is pretty damn impressive if you really think about it.

So... as an atheist-leaning agnostic (well, ok, an agnostic who has VERY SPECIFIC IDEAS about what's NOT going on), I give people useless crap to celebrate our mastery of the world. "Here! I didn't spend all day foraging for food or shelter, nor did I die from a hideous plague and/or get eaten by predators! Have an iPod!" I just call it Christmas because the neo-Pagans are hippie douchebags who've ruined the word "Solstice" for me and people get confused when I mention Yule. Language and social conventions being a tool for communication and all, I'd rather the occasional Christian wandering off thinking I share their belief system than try to explain my terminology every twelve minutes.

 

[ReverendJ]

Atheists are atheists because its cool to be one, just like it was at one time cool to be Christian. Anyways, Jesus was really born in April and Catholics just adopted a pagan holiday to convert more people.

Can you say that over here so i can poke you in the eye for being stupid. Seriously you just claimed that a whole section of society chose their beliefs "because its cool" whats wrong with you dude.

In his family, it's cool to be Christian, so he assumes that about the rest of us.

 

[Droa]

A) as many people have said, its not a Christian Holiday, it never truly was, pagan roots etc.
B) To those who say about it being the celebration of Christ's birth are also wrong. The easiest way a new religion gets in place is by saying the gods of the previous religion were sub-servant or part of their own religions pantheon, or as the primary Christian case was to say they just didn't exist(cos there can only be 1) or the enemies of Christendom and have reason to attack them. The general way of getting around the bad feelings of being conquered was to have all the holidays they celebrated continue on the same way. Easter is the same, it was originally a harvest thing. Catholicism just placed a bunch of their own names and such to these dates to try and make themselves look better. If we really go far into it, pretty much every religion has stolen stuff from others, (depictions of Satan as goat-legged and such, but wont open that can of worms here.)

 

[YawningAngel]

It's a public holiday in the country in which I live, it'd be puerile in the extreme to sit at home sulking just because I happen not to give credence to the religious reasons behind the holiday.

 

[Vohn_exel]

Yeah I never understood why atheists couldn't celebrate Christmas. I mean, sure it's a religious heavy holiday, but they don't have to celebrate those parts. It's just as easy to have a sign saying "Merry Christmas" outside your house as it is to have "Jesus is the reason for the season."

I mean, Santa and Christmas Lights, and even the Christmas Tree aren't Christian exclusive things. I'd never want my kids (If I ever have any) to grow up without a Santa Claus or waiting for Christmas Night to come.

 

[Yopaz]

The tradition of Christmas has little to do with Christianity. The tradition is older, there's nothing in the Christian tradition that suggests gifts at all.
Christmas is a whole bunch of Ancient, old and new traditions (new being in the area of 100 years old). Do you really think that after Jesus were born they decided to bring in a picea in a country where they probably didn't have it? The Christmas tree is German and is about 100 years old.
In the time before Christianity we celebrated the 22nd of December because it's the darkest day of the year, or said in a more positive way, the day where things get brighter. Celebrated with gifts, kinda like in modern Christmas.

I think the better question here is how aethiests celebrate easter... Anyways I think it is kind of odd. But hey, to each their own

Now this is actually a good point! The reason is quite similar to Christmas though. At least here it has to do with the coming of spring so we actually celebrate that the plants starts to grow again and that the leaves start coming. Nice avatar btw.

Most holidays that we celebrate has to do with some practically ancient tradition. Humans have the tendencies to find importance in certain things, we have the tendencies to worship things. Religion, either believing in gods or spirits is so old we can't find out when it started. What is for certain though is that we know nothing of the dates in Christianity.
The calendar we had at the time was inaccurate at best, the bible is written a long time after the events occurred, it's poorly translated and copied before printing was invented so there are copies of copies of copies. This leads to errors that may be small in the first place, but they lead to further errors and then it gets worse and worse. The Christian holidays aren't placed similar times because the amazing coincidence that the events behind the holidays occurred at those times. It is because Christianity had an aggressive approach and wanted to kill off opposition. Rather than directly killing those who didn't believe they gave them reasons to believe. Vikings became Christians because they could get presents when they were baptized. If Christianity had let them keep their own holidays that would have caused confusion about their former religion. The Christian holidays had to replace the former.

Also I don't celebrate really celebrate Easter. I get a week off from school, but I don't do anything special besides not showing up there.

 

[awmperry]

As several posters have said, Christmas wasn't about Christianity originally; the Christian church, in its usual habit of appropriating the beliefs and rituals of "pagan" tribes and then converting them by telling them "Look, you've believed in our god all along", created Christmas out of a combination of Nordic, central European and Roman festivals. The most famous is probably Saturnalia, of course, but there are also connections to Mithras, Scandinavian blot, and of course Coca-Cola's early advertising campaigns.

So yeah... Christmas as a celebration of the birth of Jesus is - cynically speaking - largely a Christian marketing campaign. In that sense, the purpose of Christmas as we know it has changed little since the first millennium - the difference is that then they were selling a religion, now they're selling cuddly toys, sub-par smartphones and bedroom novelty items of questionable humour.

Personally? I'm undecided on religion. As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing to stop a god or gods from existing, but if they're really omnipotent they don't need worship. And if they deserve worship, they won't demand it - so I tend to largely ignore religion.

I love Christmas, though, largely because of the traditions. The Christmas tree (or, this year for irritating reasons of space and budget, the Christmas bush - the thing's less than three foot tall), the food, the decorations, Donald Duck on TV at 3PM on Christmas Eve... Unfortunately the classic Christmas happiness has been pretty forced of late, what with economic hassles and health scares and all sorts of stuff, but yeah.

And it's always fun to be given stuff, of course, but I guess there's little chance of that either this year.

Anyway. Sod religion, go Christmas. ;-)

 

[gillebro]

Yeah, I'm from a pretty non-religious family, and we still celebrate it, and really look forward to it, and everything. The presents are nice, obviously, I'm not going to lie, but I think even without them I'd still look forward to it. It's a nice time, you know? It's a time to be with whoever makes you happy (family, friends, pets, lovers, yourself, etc) and celebrate whatever you want to celebrate - being together, I like to think.
I think it's unfair of those... less accepting, shall we say, Christians to say that it's "their" holiday. The current name of the holiday is, obviously, of Christian origin, but as so many others have said, the holiday itself was not of Christian origin. And even if it was, I would argue that others have just as much right to celebrate being with each other and opening presents and wining and dining on this particular day as Christians do. It is not as if what us non-religious folk, or what any folk of other religions, do on Christmas day is really any of your business. You celebrate the day your way, we'll celebrate it ours.

 

[Mr Companion]

I think Christmas is no longer just a religious holiday. I believe in god but I know several atheists who celebrate Christmas and some of my other Christian friends do not think they should be celebrating if they do not believe in Christ. I believe it has gone past that to just a holiday to come together and show each other we care.

Edit: If you read what I said: I think atheists should, do and can celebrate Chirstams.

Its really refreshing to see a Christian who sees that Christmas is about more than Jesus. Its about sharing, enjoying eachothers company and feeling a collective warmth in a cold season. And this is coming from a guy who would usually never say those sort of things about anything.

Edit: By the way I am not religious myself, I just enjoy the mutual joy that Christmas brings.