holidaysEven among other like-minded friends, is there a reason to avoid holidays that are mainly associated with religion, such as Christmas? Is there a degree of hypocrisy in celebrating them?
Christmas has its origins in a pagan holiday. If christians don’t consider it hypocritical to celebrate it, neither should atheists.
no, most of the religious holidays were pagan holidays before they were changed. Anyway if you like having chocolate and are fond of rabbits then go for it, you dont have to bring Jesus into it. I am a very strong Atheist and love Christmas. Its a great holiday. Ive just taken the day back and made it my own. The star on top of my Christmas tree is for Carl Sagan. PS The Santa you know if a advert for Coke.
Christmas, like all holidays, give us an opportunity to reflect on our lives and appreciate being together with our families. Like all holidays this time of year, it’s a reminder that, even though it’s cold and dark for a good portion of the day, it’ll get warmer and brighter. Before we fully understood why it’s cold and dark this time of year (at least in the northern hemisphere), we had to take it on faith that it would…
Remembering and understanding that there are many holidays that are celebrated around the same time, if you feel awkward with the Christian connotation, substitute other, less loaded words for the holiday - Solstice, Yule, Humphrey Bogart’s Birthday, etc.
That being said, the general idea behind Christmas - being good to each other, gathering with friends and family, remembering those of us who are less fortunate - all of those are ideas that atheists can support. It’s just convenient to use the common parlance for the day.
Holidays are hardly about the actual religious implications behind them anymore; If you enjoy the festivities around the holiday, enjoy it.
Why let a religion you don’t believe in interfere with your good time? I don’t think it’s hypocritical, especially since it’s so commercialized and secular anyway. Plus the part about Christian holidays mirroring pagan holidays.
I think the major reason is that you don’t understand why you need this holiday. What’s the purpose in it?
No. I celebrate Christmas with my family. I don’t even call it xmas very much. I love this holiday. It doesn’t bother me in the least that it is associated with Christianity- for me it is about family, generosity, and general goodwill. Not believing in Jesus no more ruins it for me than not believing in Santa Clause. That being said, there are plenty of religious events that mean nothing to me, and I don’t celebrate those, but you should not allow something you enjoy for good reasons to be ruined because other people need religion to make it meaningful for them.
Absolutely none. Any reason is a good reason to have a holiday.
Just because someone created a religious reason for a holiday is no reason to balk at it. You don’t need to follow the religious traditions. It’s just another excuse to enjoy a few days off.
I actually wrote a whole LiveJournal post about that. The short version is that humans need to celebrate, and we'll come up with reasons why we're celebrating later. So I take advantage of the holiday sales, the holiday food, and the conveniently scheduled day off from work that all my loved ones have at the same time and just call it a "holiday celebration". If someone insists I that I should pick a specific holiday, I celebrate Newtonmas/Gravmas - Sir Isaac Newton's birthday as a placeholder/reminder for all the advances that science has made for society and for the world. I'll point it out things like the pagan origins, the discrepancies, the secular values, etc. when appropriate, and fight on the side of church/state separation when there's a cause to. But mostly, it's just a "holiday".
It’s an excuse to get with family and friends you don’t see very often. You’re not being a hypocrite by sending Christmas cards or exchanging gifts or singing songs like “Jingle Bells” or “Santa Got Run Over By A Reindeer”. Christmas has been so thoroughly secularized that I doubt most people even think about “oh, yeah, Jesus” except for more than a couple of minutes.
I would go so far as to say that you wouldn’t be a hypocrite by going to a church service with religious members of the family, as long as you didn’t take communion or participate in other sacraments1.
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