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Topic ClosedAtheists Celebrating Christmas?

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Poll Question: How many atheists celebrate Christmas?
Poll Choice Votes Poll Statistics
26 [76.47%]
2 [5.88%]
6 [17.65%]
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The Dark Elf View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 25 2015 at 17:11
Christmas? Yes, since it's pagan in its inception, I am quite thankful to the druids for getting me a paid day off work.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 25 2015 at 18:00
As far as I am concerned nearly all atheists celebrate christmas, although they would often name it differently - yule, saturnalia, x-mas etc. It is more "festival of light" to them, as it used to be in the far past originally, didn't it, rather than some strictly religious occasion. Let's not forget, and I believe someone mentioned this already in this thread, christmas is an adopted and renamed pagan celebration, so in fact it is actually more awkward for christians themselves to celebrate it, not for atheists, as the subject of this topic appears to suggest
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 25 2015 at 22:38
Not religious.  Not raised religious.  Like Christmas.  Always have.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 26 2015 at 00:52
even Santa Clause is of pagan origin as he is very much based opn Wotan/Odin 70% and the ideal of Christ (30%)
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 26 2015 at 01:58
Well itīs a Family tradition, so of course I celebrate it. I just donīt celebrate it for religious reasons, and I certainly donīt go to church...Itīs all about being with my Family, eating lots of great food, and seing the face of happy children when they open their presents.
 
Before the Danes were christianed there was a similar celebration around the same date, so itīs not like itīs that different from what came before...
 
...and yes Iīm as atheist as they come...


Edited by UMUR - November 26 2015 at 02:00
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 26 2015 at 02:00
We all need a little comfort in the cold, darker months.

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."   -- John F. Kennedy
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 26 2015 at 02:51
^I prefer cold winter times. For the atmosphere/ambience snow brings and also I'm much more productive than in hot summers.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 26 2015 at 03:16
Originally posted by Darious Darious wrote:

As far as I am concerned nearly all atheists celebrate christmas, although they would often name it differently - yule, saturnalia, x-mas etc. It is more "festival of light" to them, as it used to be in the far past originally, didn't it, rather than some strictly religious occasion. Let's not forget, and I believe someone mentioned this already in this thread, christmas is an adopted and renamed pagan celebration, so in fact it is actually more awkward for christians themselves to celebrate it, not for atheists, as the subject of this topic appears to suggest

Sometimes I wish that the christians themselves realize that they celebrate christmas more than Easter (which celebrates the resurrection of Christ and they call the most important christian holiday, though the name "Easter" is derived from the pagan-Celtic "Ostara", the vernal equinox). And indeed, sometimes I use the name "yule" for christmas and "saturnalia" for the days preceding it.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 26 2015 at 05:24
Off course atheists celebrate it, as a party and family thing, and why not.
The question seems to implicate that is should be strange or wrong, and that seems i bit strange.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 26 2015 at 10:40
Originally posted by UMUR UMUR wrote:

Well itīs a Family tradition, so of course I celebrate it. I just donīt celebrate it for religious reasons, and I certainly donīt go to church...Itīs all about being with my Family, eating lots of great food, and seing the face of happy children when they open their presents.
 
Before the Danes were christianed there was a similar celebration around the same date, so itīs not like itīs that different from what came before...
 
...and yes Iīm as atheist as they come...

You should try it JonasBig smile
At least the church my grandparents attend every year in Brovst (Jylland baby!). They've got an old woman playing the organ, and every year she seems to have upped her dosage of LSDLOL The prelude she did the last time I was there sounded like a particularly inebriated Ray Manzarek coxing completely out. Folks there seemed to enjoy every minute of it which surprised the hell out of me...
Then when we hit 'Et barn er født i Betlehem' she'd sneaked in a girl choir that proceeded to sing hallelujah in all the wrong places. The additional trumpet player with hiccups was the icing on the cake. Safe to say that my dad and I had an extremely hard time holding our laughter back for something like an hour. Good times.

 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 26 2015 at 11:34
We always celebrate Christmas....I'm the only non theist in the family though no one really attends church or talks much about it , but they all profess belief in some form of 'God'.
After dinner the men go out in the garage to smoke pricey cigars and drink B&B. I think I'll bring up the God thing this year and see what the guys have to say.
 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 26 2015 at 12:00
Just an fyi in regards to my previous post to Jonas: I was of course semi-joking. While it was a very funny experience, it is still horribly uncomfortable trying to keep from laughing in church...and neither my dad or I enjoy ridiculing other people's beliefs. 
Just wanted to make that clear before anyone got the wrong ideaSmile 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 26 2015 at 12:13
Originally posted by Guldbamsen Guldbamsen wrote:

Just an fyi in regards to my previous post to Jonas: I was of course semi-joking. While it was a very funny experience, it is still horribly uncomfortable trying to keep from laughing in church...and neither my dad or I enjoy ridiculing other people's beliefs. 
Just wanted to make that clear before anyone got the wrong ideaSmile 
 
No one got the wrong idea, don't worry. 
 
At my (Catholic) mother-in-law's funeral, the service was weirdly amusing because none of her children were raised Catholic, and therefore none of the chief mourners had a clue as to what was going on - the priest kept throwing us surreptitious hand signals so we would know when to get up and down, and we all kept looking over our shoulders to figure out when to join in with responses or not.
 
I nearly disgraced myself when communion was offered, with the extortion to drink the wine, which of course made me think of Eddie Izzard's take on communion ("Drink this wine, it's a nice Merlot") and I had to bite back laughter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hP9XWMDcDs
 
 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 26 2015 at 13:18
It's a dumb yet smart question because no one would ever ask if atheists celebrate the sabbath yet most of us avoid working at the weekend wherever possible regardless of whether we are religious or not. Like not-working on Sunday, having a slap-up feast and swapping gifts in the middle of winter is something that we do because everyone else does. We also like eating chocolate eggs in spring time.

In modern times we tend to think of working life in the pre-industrial age as being pretty hard and gruelling, and indeed it was, yet while our pre-christian forebears worked a 7-day week, they worked fewer hours in each day than we do. What they didn't have was a two-week annual vacation to some exotic lands like some of us do, however, they had 8 mini-breaks each year and while they knew how to work hard, they also knew how to party hard (and basically any excuse for a party was fine by them).

So back in the annuls of time the pre-christian European religions had some form of feast (= festival) every six weeks or so, marking the beginning and middle of each season [therefore four seasons = 8 feasts... 52 weeks / 8 = 6― weeks]. So while these were primarily religious feasts, their secondary purpose was to provide regular respite from the toil of labour. 

The early christians adopted some these feasts into their own religious calendar to ease the conversion of pagans to christianity. There is no historical or biblical justification for celebrating the birth of Jesus coincident with the winter solstice or his death coincident with the vernal equinox other than they were two major pagan festivals that the ancient Europeans were not going to give up without a fight. It is oft said that Easter is a moveable feast and so it is because the date is set as the first Sunday after the vernal equinox full moon. Which means that Good Friday/Easter Sunday are not the anniversary of the actual days Jesus died and was resurrected, but the days that christians adopted from the pre-christian calendar to commemorate his death and subsequent resurrection (probably because the Ēastre festival was a pagan feast that celebrated re-birth). Similarly, Christmas Day is not the anniversary day of the actual birth of Jesus (some 'scholars' with nothing better to do have attempted to calculate his probable birth-date based upon 'clues' in the bible but frankly you'd do just as well pulling random dates from a hat), but a commemoration day.

The thing is... if an atheist calls it Christmas (or x-mas, where 'x' is pronounced "criss" as in criss-cross and not "ex"), Yule or Saturnalia they would still be using a religious name, just as calling it a 'holiday' is also non-secular since holiday (literally) means holy day. The only valid, secular, non-religious name for it is 'winter solstice' since that is an astronomical term.

Will I be celebrating the winter solstice? You betcha.


Edited by Dean - November 26 2015 at 13:19
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 26 2015 at 13:39
i also feel northern hemisphere christmas tradisions must be wierd for southern hemisphere people who has zero reindeers, nisser/santas, snow, winter, pine trees, do australians use eucalyptus for christmas tree?

Edited by Icarium - November 26 2015 at 13:40
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 26 2015 at 14:07
Originally posted by Icarium Icarium wrote:

i also feel northern hemisphere christmas tradisions must be wierd for southern hemisphere people who has zero reindeers, nisser/santas, snow, winter, pine trees, do australians use eucalyptus for christmas tree?
All those things are pretty rare in the Middle East too Wink
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 02 2015 at 13:24
I've always appreciated your holiday avatar, Dean.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 03 2015 at 15:37
Everytime an atheist celebrates Christmas, a new branch of mathematics is formed.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 03 2015 at 16:03
Atheist have Feynman diagrms decorating the christmas tree.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 06 2015 at 12:46
Nearly all I know do, and I do myself. 

I think no one, especially a lot of Christians, will disagree with this: It's become more or less a secular holiday anyway. 


As anyone who has ever worked retail in the US knows, the Christmas season has actually been slowly eroding family time since we know come in to work earlier and earlier on Thanksgiving night. People are there too shopping, and many were camped out the day before..... I don't see it being very long (maybe next year) that some places start doing away with Thanksgiving as a holiday and it's just another shopping day. 
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