cultural-identity, christianity, christmasChristians seem to think on December 25, everyone celebrates the birth of Jesus. Yet, when I tell them explicitly that it is expressly not my desire to celebrate that, I’m often confused by the advice I get. I do not want to celebrate Jesus at all during the Holidays. I want people to look at me, and my custom, and know that I’m certainly not thinking about Christ…
What parts of Christmas is the celebration of Christ? Don’t tell me what I should do, what will Christians be doing, that I shouldn’t be doing: I don’t have a nativity set.
Apart from nativities in Christmas decorations and some musical works such as Handel’s “Messiah”, I can’t think of much in the modern American version of Christmas outside of church services that explicitly celebrates the birth of Christ.
Most everything else I can think of is either something co-opted from pagan celebrations of the passing of the solstice (cutting down trees, getting stinking drunk) or something driven by crass materialism and consumerism.
Christmas has always been a somewhat problematic holiday for Christians. First and foremost, it was an obvious attempt to co-opt a pagan holiday by the early Constantine Church. The Romans in that period had many holidays centered around the Winter Solstice, not the least of which was the Feast of Sol Invictus, Constantine’s own religion before he adopted Christianity for political reasons, which fell precisely on the 25th of December. (Also of note is the fact that Constantine was also the one who made Sunday into the day of rest, dedicating it not to Jesus, but to Sol Invictus).
For this and many other reasons, most Protestants refused to celebrate Christmas for most of the period between the Reformation and the 20th century. In America, specifically, celebrations of Christmas were pretty much a uniquely Catholic affair until the early 20th century. It was this lack of a real religious charge to the holiday that allows Christmas to be so easily commercialized at that time. It also made sure that Christmas would always be, at least in the U.S., far more of a secular holiday than a religious one.
So my answer to the question is: not much…
When I was younger there was this candle lighting ceremony at my grandmother’s house. It included lots of candles and drawing bible verses then lighting candles to represent Jesus. Some people, especially the older ones, have celebrated Jesus on Christmas. If that’s all you know, that will greatly add to not understanding a secular attitude to it all.
Edit: The main point was that many people are accustomed to it having something to do with Jesus, not my personal story there.
I could never see much of a difference between The religious side of Christmas and the Religious side of Easter as a child, what has chocolate, rabbits, pine trees etc got to do with Jesus?. I got some gifts and a holiday. What more could I want?
It’s really rather more than the xians adopting the pagan date and some pagan customs to celebrate the “birth of Jesus.” The whole concept of the birth of their Jesus character is derived from pagan astrological ideas about the death and rebirth of light at the Winter Solstice. Interestingly, the earliest gospel, Mark, says nothing about the birth of “Jesus” and many of the elements later grafted onto the story in Matthew and Luke reflect other birth myths of the various god-men knocking around the region at the time.
Don’t go to church, pray, play Christian music, or use angels as decoration. That is: don’t do anything too boring.
If you are going to use stars as decoration, then as long as you have more than one it’s not the Star of Wonder, it’s astronomy.
But really, I don’t understand why you want to be so careful about being sure to avoid anything potentially Christian. Maybe that’s fun in itself, but otherwise I’d say do whatever you enjoy.
Do what you want to do and take part in the parts of Christmas that have meaning to you. Does it really matter what the believers are doing and/or what they want you to do?
If you like angel decorations at Christmas, put them up. If you want to sing religious carols/hymns, go ahead.
To me, one of the nice parts about being an atheist is that you are free to create your own traditions based on your own views, not bound to doing XYZ simply because god tells you to. It’s silly to not do something just because ‘the Christians’ are doing it too.
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