Hey guys! So yeah, I don't know how
many people read this or saw my last post, but those who do are aware
by now that I'm an atheist. In fact, this Christmas is my fourth
Christmas as a non-theist. A lot of people wonder what Christmas is
like for atheists. Many other people assume what Christmas is like
for atheists—the season just wouldn't be complete without Facebook
posts and forwarded emails about how the evil atheists are trying to
destroy Christmas by getting rid of nativity scenes in front of
courthouses and forcing people to say “Happy Holidays” instead of
“Merry Christmas.” There's a war on Christmas, didn't you know?
I'm not going to pretend that there
aren't some nutty atheists out there, although I've never met any
(online or in real life). But most atheists in the western world
actually enjoy and participate in Christmas. You may also be
surprised to learn that most atheists object to the commercialism and
materialism that accompanies the season just as much as any
Christian. These misconceptions stem from the fact that Christmas is
undeniably a religious holiday, at least in origin. How could an
atheist enjoy that? The answer is complex and varies from individual
to individual, but the root of the answer is that Christians don't
own Christmas.
This is a pretty brazen assumption on
its face. It's called Christmas,
after all! Christ's mass! We celebrate Jesus's birth on Christmas!
Hold on just one minute, though. Let's talk about the history
of Christmas. You probably know that winter celebrations and holidays
were around long before Christianity was a thing. Most of our modern
Christmas traditions aren't Christian in origin at all, but are
repurposed pagan traditions. During the middle ages, one way the
Christian church (the Catholic church really, but at the time that
was the same thing) spread its beliefs to the heathens was through an
age-old process called syncretism.
Syncretism is essentially the process where one religious group
assimilates the traditions of another religious group, often under a
new name. A great example of this is the incorporation of the Greek
pantheon into the Roman religion—Zeus became Jupiter, Aphrodite
became Venus, and so on. The same thing happened with Catholicism and
various pagan traditions. Saturnalia, Yule, Solstice, and other
celebrations became Christmas in the Christian tradition. Christians
simply did what countless other religious traditions had done before
them, and adopted and adapted the conventions of other groups to fit
their own system. Over time, Christians adopted the traditions of
those groups and incorporated them into their own holiday, giving new
meaning to those traditions.
My point in
describing this is to demonstrate that saying that Christ is the
reason for Christmas makes very little sense when you consider the
history of the holiday. If Christianity never existed, we would still
probably celebrate some kind of winter festival today. In fact, if
Christmas really had originated as a celebration of Christ's birth,
assuming such a thing happened and assuming that the Biblical account
is accurate, we would be celebrating it in the springtime, not the
wintertime.
Despite all this,
of course, Christmas does have a long Christian tradition and is
heavily imbued with Christian meaning—which is exactly what you'd
expect from a syncretically adopted holiday, but that doesn't change
the cultural and religious importance of Christmas to modern
Christians. But to say that only Christians can derive any
significant meaning from the holiday ignores the very origins of that
holiday. Sometimes I wonder if the Roman pagans complained about
Christianity's co-opting of Saturnalia in much the same fashion that
Christians complain about atheists having their own spin on the
holiday.
So,
back to the original topic: atheists and Christmas. What does
Christmas actually mean to me? As an atheist, obviously the message
of “Jesus is born, yay!” doesn't mean a whole lot to me. But many
of the traditional messages of Christmas still have meaning for me.
“Peace on earth, good will to men (and women)” is a sentiment
that I think everyone, regardless of religious beliefs, can get
behind. I like the traditions of Christmas—spending time with
family, giving gifts and making treats. I like the decorations and
the music. In fact, I generally prefer religious Christmas music to
tunes like “Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer”, which generally annoy
me. At its root, both today and throughout its various incarnations
in various cultures and religions, Christmas is a winter festival,
and I enjoy that aspect of it. Perhaps most importantly, celebrating
Christmas as an atheist has forced me to think through and articulate
to myself the meaning of the holiday in my own life, which is always
a useful endeavor. Socrates said that the unexamined life is not
worth living, and perhaps the unexamined holiday is not worth
celebrating.
Merry Christmas!
