Christmas and Atheism
Quite a while ago, I saw somebody on the internet suggest that atheists who celebrate Christmas are hypocrites. This is simply not true. Christmas has become a cultural holiday. It's become a holiday about spending time with your family, bringing gifts. It's also a holiday of rampant consumerism and very random traditions. If an atheist is a hypocrite for celebrating Christmas, then Christians are extremely hypocritical considering the non-Christian roots of Christmas. It makes perfect sense for an atheist to take the best parts of whatever religion has to offer (if we can even say that Christianity "offered" us Christmas). Coming together and enjoying life and having a good time shouldn't be something only for the religious. If I listen to a Christmas song, I do so because I like the way the track sounds. I do not agree with every lyric of every song I have in my collection.
There's nothing wrong with choosing to be with family and friends on a Christmas Day. Religion does not have a monopoly on getting together on a specific date. Similarly, the Jews do not have a monopoly on latkes in December. I can cook up potato cakes any time I want. The only thing that would make me a hypocrite as an atheist would be to believe in god. The only thing that would run contrary to the spirit of many atheists would be to believe things without sufficient evidence.
"War on Christmas"
A while back Donald Trump bemoaned the fact that Starbucks' coffee cups did not contain the phrase, "Merry Christmas". He suggested a possible boycott of Starbucks over this and said that if he were president, we would all be saying Merry Christmas again. Obviously, these are thoughts of an imbecile. But I also wonder how far Trump is deviating from his normal self to pander to the super religious party that is the Republican Party. It's also unclear to me how Donald Trump plans to make more people say "Merry Christmas", but I suspect it would be legally sketchy.
Of course, Christmas is not under any threat. The days leading up to it remain one of the most profitable times of the year for retail stores. In a way, Black Friday unofficially marks the start of holiday season, and Christmas is the largest reason why this time of year is considered a holiday season in the first place. In that sense, the days leading up to Christmas are not only the second most profitable days for stores, but also the most profitable at the same time.
While the percentage of Americans that polled as Christians fell from 78% to 70% over the last 7 years, Christians still remain the majority of the United States and by far the largest religious group. In fact, the United States is the country with the most amount of Christians in the entire world. Despite how common Christians are here, they find a way to be disproportionally represented in government. If there really is a "war on Christmas", it would be a war that can't be won.
What exactly is a "war on Christmas"? Some cite the trend of saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" to be part of the war. While I personally do not care if somebody says "Merry Christmas" to me (I try to think about the intentions of the person uttering the phrase instead of what they're actually saying), it makes sense to say "Happy Holidays" as it includes more people. If somebody doesn't want to switch to the latter, then call it for what it is: laziness. There's nothing righteous about the utterance, and sticking with it just makes you stubborn. I don't think much rides on this utterance, but I'm not the one complaining.
While I believe the Constitution shouldn't be a holy grail simply because it was one of the founding articles of our nation, separation of church and state is a solid concept that stands the test of time. If we are going to allow Christian decorations in government buildings and public areas (including the more religious ones like the Nativities Scene), then we should allow all types of religious displays. The people of Fox News don't seem to agree. In their twisted world, criticisms of Christmas decorations in public schools is a war on Christmas, yet criticizing Satanists when they want to do the same is not. Angry people ran to social media to exclaim that Obama is banning God and Christmas when people found out that a memo was sent to people working in Veteran Affairs locations, reiterating their policy about religious symbols in the offices. What the angry mob on Twitter don't realize is that the policy wasn't even Obama's doing. Furthermore, some of the rumors spreading on social media alleged that the phrase "Merry Christmas" was banned in VA offices. This is simply not true.
It seems that many Christians need something better to do in the holidays. They are either too easily misled, too hysterical, or too dishonest.
Christmas, the Holiday Itself
Just some light-hearted history now. :)
The Roman Pagans had the celebration of Saturnalia, a festive period of lawlessness where nobody can be punished for damaging property or injuring people, and everybody got nice and drunk. The Christians wanted to convert some Pagans, so they promised the continuation of the celebration. The problem of course, is that Saturnalia wasn't and isn't a very Christian holiday. And so, on the end of Saturnalia, it was declared that Jesus' birthday was December 25th (which is false). Some of the Christians had their fun by making Jews by forcing them to race the streets naked. Eventually the Jews got tired of being treated like shit, so they rebelled... But not to a great effect. In one incident, multiple Jews were murdered, many maimed, and many women raped.
The Christmas Tree probably (and I say probably, because history is hazy at times) originated from the trees which Pagan worshipped. The idea of kissing the mistletoe came from Norse mythology, where the god Baulder was killed by a mistletoe by rival god Hoder while fighting for the female Nanna. Druid rituals used mistletoe to poison human sacrificial victims. Kissing under the mistletoe may be a fushion of these two ideas. In pre-Christian Rome, the emperors demanded gifts and offerings from the most despised citizens during Saturnalia (December) and Kalends (January). It later turned into gift giving among normal people.
Nicholas was most likely born in Parara, Turkey in 270CE. He later became Bishop of Myra and died on 345CE. Over a thousand years later in the 19th century, he was named a saint. Nicholas was a senior bishop who convened in the Council of Ncaea in 325CE. The text they produced considered Jews to be 'children of the devil' who sentenced Jesus to death. In 1087, a group of sailors who idolized Nicholas moved his bones from Turkey to Italy. There Nicholas was superseded by Pasqua Epiphania ("The Grandmother"), who filled children's stockings with gifts. As the Nicholas cult spread northward, German and Celtic Pagans began to accept it and merge it with their own gods. Woden as among them and had a long beard and rode a horse through the heavens. Nicholas merged with Woden, discarding the heavy Mediterranean appearance of Nicholas. While Nicholas' death was December 6th, the Christians moved the relevant date to the 25th for reasons previously mentioned. The name, "Santa Claus", came from a satire written by a Dutch novelist. The idea of portraying Santa Claus as a man riding eight reindeer, going down chimneys, was invented by Dr. Clement Moore in 1822 and later stories by other people gave Santa a home in the north pole. Finally, in 1931, Coca Cola hired an artist to draw Santa Claus. The artist modeled him after his friend, and bam - Santa Claus was born: A blend of Christian crusader, Pagan god, and commercial idol.
Credits to SimpletoRemember.com for their work.
Santa Claus and Wonder
I do not pretend to say that teaching kids that Santa Claus is real will have a negative, long term impact on those children. On the other hand, I think it's best to drill in skepticism and a drive to look for evidence despite what one wants to believe. I have a friend that would teach his kids (if he had any) about Santa Claus. We are both atheists (even though he would disagree), so what gives? The idea is that kids have a sense of wonder. And imagination. He wants to give his (hypothetical) kids a sense of wonder by telling them about Santa Claus.
I have a different view on this topic. If I am asked by my (hypothetical) child whether Santa Claus exists, I would ask him/her how one would go about figuring that question out. I think it would a good exercise in the scientific method. That doesn't mean that the child's world will be forever grey, with just hard logic, slipping into nihilism.
What my friend is implying with his sentiment is that children have a sense of curiosity and wonder that is lost as they age. I think the real question is why this transformation happens. Neil deGrasse Tyson believes this happens because adults tell children to stop being curious. Don't pluck the petals, I just spent money on that. Don't play with the egg. Everything is a don't. In essence, he believes that adults beat the curiosity out of children. You need curiosity to go with your wonder.
One thing I don't think is the answer to this problem is to teach kids to believe things on bad evidence, and then watch the rest of the world take away their Santa Claus when they get older. Even if that helps, that's temporary unless you want the kid to believe a new piece of nonsense when their last belief gets squashed by reality.
Believe it or not, there is something more wondrous than Santa Claus. Yes, there is. Did you know that we are all glowing, just not in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum? That is why some cameras can see us through walls. If we were hot enough, we would glow... brighter and brighter, until the color changes and the light goes outside of the visible spectrum once again... Ultraviolet. X-rays. Gamma rays. Eventually the wavelength of light will be so small, it will be as small as Planck's Length, where space itself might get foamy and vague.
Did you know that the reason why astronauts feel weightless onboard the International Space Station is because they are falling? They are constantly falling, but they are moving fast enough to fall away from the curvature of the earth. Move too slowly and you simply fall back down to earth. Move too quickly and you leave earth's orbit. Go at just the right speed, and you will fall for what seems like forever.
If you think about all the poetry, music, stories, and emerging types of art and art yet to exist, if you think about the greatest and the worst things humanity has done... If you think about how big the world is, with black holes which warp time itself, to the microscopic, where there are more bacteria in you than there are your own cells, to all the discoveries we will make and all the cultures and beliefs and philosophies people lived with, I think you will find that the world is the most amazing thing ever. The answer has been staring in our face the whole time.
With that said, please take time to watch the video below.
(To view in a higher resolution, click here: HERE.)
