It is about an hour past midnight, in the wee hours of Christmas morning. The parents are safely asleep, and so I have just gotten back from creeping out into the living room and leaving them a little surprise in the stockings left hanging over our (entirely traditional) Christmas Victrola. Since I know neither of them will see this blog before they see the living room, I can post a picture here.
Those stockings were made by my Wonderful Mother when my brother and I were very young. She made them out of cloth she wove herself on a giant loom that took up the entire spare room of the house my parents rented in Palo Alto, out of a pattern she created out of thin air. She made four, actually. One each for myself, my brother, and our two cousins. For the next fifteen years or so my brother and I would awake on Christmas morning to find them stuffed with candies and goodies—bribes, essentially, to keep us busy while we waited for our dad (a chronically late riser in those days) to wake up so we could open presents together.
I remember in the beginning there was some half-hearted pretext that Santa came and left the goodies for us, but my brother and I soon deduced that “Santa” was just a code word for your parents at about one in the morning on Christmas Day. It was a game of make-believe for us, and we played along as long as it was fun—until one year when we were teenagers my mother announced that “Santa” had had enough and could she please not buy stocking stuffers this year? We relented.
My entire family (and by that extension, myself) are atheists, so it may be surprising to some of you that we celebrate Christmas.
It shouldn’t be, really.
Christmas is, after all, just what we currently call the tradition of sharing gifts, eating good food, and bringing lights into the dark around the winter solstice. Human beings have been celebrating versions of Christmas for as long as we can remember. Probably as long as we have been human. And we probably will be celebrating Christmas, though we may not always call it that, for as long as there are humans on Earth (or any other planet with a tilted axis). And what is atheism but a human at their default spiritual state? All atheists have is their humanity, and that is what Christmas is all about, really:
Celebrating humanity, and our capacity for love and generosity and our appreciation of good food and music and dancing and our unique ability to bring light and warmth into otherwise cold and dark places.
Early Christians showed no compunction about appropriating the popular pagan winter festivals into their own religion, to make it more appealing. They even went so far as to forcibly move the observance of their messiah’s birthday from the spring (when it actually happened) to the middle of winter. Even so, many of our Christmas traditions today are not Christian in origin; they are holdovers from the religions that Christianity was trying to compete with.
And one of the best parts of being an atheist is that you can pick and choose your fun celebrations from any and all faiths with no feelings of guilt or loyalty. I certainly don’t see any problem with keeping fine old traditions going, especially if they are such good ideas like public singing, eating chocolate, giving presents, and lighting fires in the middle of the night.
It’s not about god for me (any of them); it’s about being human. And I think that’s something we can all celebrate.
Christians took over a bunch of different holidays that were already happening at about the same time, condensed them into one, and slapped a new name on it.
I see no problem in stealing it back from them.
But unlike them, I don’t have an agenda (except maybe to make eggnog this evening) so I can’t be bothered to change the name.
So as my little fuzzy red gay dragon from Wales would say: Nadolig Llawen!
May all the gods who have been celebrated in the name of Christmas (every one) bless you.
And for those of you who find the blessings of gods superfluous, my dragon wishes you well also.
You can never have too many well-wishes from dragons, whatever your faith or lack thereof. I take this truth to be self-evident.
Merry Christmas,
—Goldeen
Goldeen Ogawa disbelieves in all religions equally, but believes almost unconditionally in humanity’s ability to tell stories. Take from that what you will. You can email her about the things in your head at goldeenogawa@gmail.com or peck at her on Twitter @GrimbyTweets.