August 14, 2011 by Scott · Leave a Comment
I’ve thought about this project for years. The topics and thoughts I publish here will be very controversial for most people. My goal is to challenge your beliefs and present a cogent viewpoint that is likely to be much different from your own. I’m not saying I’m right, only that I’m not wrong…any more than you are right or wrong. On most issues, people argue endlessly, when if they understood what is meant by the words that are said, they could either agree, or agree to disagree without all the cacophony that ensues.
I’m an atheist who celebrates Christmas!
To give you an example of what I’ll cover, I am an atheist, but I am not what you might think upon reading that. I don’t mind saying Merry Christmas to people. The reason is that Christmas can mean different things to different people.
Every December, it seems, we have the strident atheists insisting on using “Happy Holidays” and the equally pretentious Christians proclaiming that “Christ is the reason for the season…”.
Well, my view is that the Christians stole the season from the pagans, who celebrated the winter solstice long before. While I would certainly take any Wikipedia article with a grain of salt and check the facts independently, do have a look at the article on Yule log to get a sense of what I am writing about.
In addition, Christmas has become filled with traditions and stories that have nothing to do with Christianity. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, for instance, was created in 1939 for Montgomery Ward (a US retailer). It really doesn’t matter the origins, though, as each of the elements brings a different part of human nature together to make Christmas a celebration of humanity in the dead of winter.
Rudolph, for instance, represents the outcast person who is different from others because of some feature. The story shows that what made Rudolph an outcast saved Christmas. The story thus helps people who are different from others around them feel better about themselves. What’s wrong with that?
Surely, any real Christian would see that helping others to feel better about themselves, sharing and enjoying the many traditions of this time of year is not the exclusive right of one set of beliefs. In my opinion, the blowhards who proclaim themselves as filled with righteous indignation whenever anyone tries to do anything that doesn’t fall in line with their belief system should open their hearts and minds to other people. It’s all good!
When seen in this light, there is really no reason for Jews or Muslims or atheists or anyone else to exclude Christmas from their winter holiday list. When all is said and done, each person gets out of it exactly what they want to, and that’s the magic of Christmas!
Of course, other religions celebrate different holidays during this time of year, so for these people it may be better to say “Happy Holidays!”. The only reason I think Christmas exemplifies the season better than the others is that it has so many traditions from so many cultures associated with it, that it can be looked at as more of a generic holiday. Think of Hanukkah if you want to see a traditional religious holiday that doesn’t have a large presence in the secular space. That’s what separates Christmas from them and allows me to say, without contradicting my non-belief…”Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”
Fleshing this out will take some time…
Note: This is a boilerplate I’m putting on all my sites…
I have been thinking about a network of sites for quite a while now. I finally decided to make each site a separate WordPress site. That way, I can keep the styles separately (looking similar, but different), the content relevent to the particular site (rather than all my eclectic interests thrown into one place), etc. This weekend, I created several of the sites and am in the process of adding some content and styling each of them.
This process will take quite a while, since I am very busy at work, at grad school, teaching English, being Area Governor of Toastmasters, learning Tai Chi and playing ping pong. Oh, yeah, and sleeping and eating, too! So, I anticipate this will be a slow process, but having the sites up and running with themes that can be modified is a huge start. Now, whenever I have time, I can create content and put it up. By next year, things should be moving along here.