Atheists Celebrating Christmas?

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.

You should try it Jonas

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 LSD 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.

 

Just wanted to make that clear before anyone got the wrong idea 

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.

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.

All those things are pretty rare in the Middle East too 

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.