An Atheist’s Christmas

It’s that time of year when the infidels have it hard. Since Christmas fundamentally clashes with what we believe in, or rather don’t, we sometimes tend not to care for much of ‘that Christmas malarkey’. It’s only natural, however, that somehow we want to be part of the celebrations. The holiday season is a lovely time of the year and it does mean something to us too: it’s not because we don’t believe in God, that we don’t want peace for all people of good will. And of course, it also doesn’t mean that we don’t still want presents. Many important phases in our lives (like birth, marriage and death) have already been secularized, and alternative ceremonies are available if we want them. Christmas, however, isn’t really an ‘important phase of life’. It’s… well what is it? And what is it to me?

A sinister event?

I like to look at Christmas as a quieter, calmer counterpart to the boisterous celebrations of New Year’s Eve. Celebrating a new year – arbitrary as that may be – is a forward-looking event, a move from the old fraying calendar to the shiny new one. We start afresh, clean our slates and shrug off all the bad things that happened to us in the previous twelve months. Christmas on the other hand, offers the opportunity to contemplate what happened: what have we won, what have we lost? It’s a chance to reflect on the friends we made, the loves we found, the successes we achieved, but it can also act as a moment when we think about what went wrong and give it a place in our lives.

A secular Christmas may sound sinister, but it certainly doesn’t have to be. A wonderful Christmas dinner, the joyous company of friends or family, and the happy exchange of gifts make for an excellent way to ban out old ghosts. We are allowed to do away with the darkness that is around us: the metaphorical darkness of a year of toil and trouble, as well as the physical darkness outside. It can be just as merry as the Christian celebration of the birth of Christ. It’s simply a little more down to earth – metaphorically and literally as well. Christmas is as much an atheist’s holiday as any other. Even in a godless universe it is a celebration of life and renewal.

What else is there?

The question of course is, once you’ve established Christmas to be a valid secular annual turning point, from short days back to longer ones, from worries into hopes, what exactly is there in the traditional Christmas that you can keep? Going to midnight mass and huddling around the mock manger somehow don’t seem like an honest way to go about it. Caroling seems equally hypocritical. Lights and candles, to me at least, are perfectly sound, as are a tree and decorations. The tree, after all, is an ancient Germanic symbol of life, and it looks equally good sporting a bow on top than an angel, star or spire. And there are plenty of non-religious Christmas songs around. Slade, Wizzard, and the Pogues come to mind, but there’s nothing wrong with Bing Crosby and Perry Como to enliven the heretic yuletide atmosphere.

Gifts appear trickier: since they came to represent the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh brought by the Magi, you might think a secular Christmas could not get away with them. Fortunately, Christmas is also deeply connected to the Roman festival of the Saturnalia, also a winter solstice festival. Saturnalian tradition apparently also included the exchange of gifts as good luck-charms. So, if you want to get rid of the Christ in your Christmas, there is no need to get rid of the gifts. Good news for many, I’m sure.

Customize all you like

Of course, there is no use in trying to entirely intellectualize Christmas. Even the most pagan traditions are in some way based on religious festivals or superstitious customs. A truly secular, atheistic Christmas would have to do away with pretty much of all traditional celebrations. In the end, it would simply be the observance of an astronomical fact: the completion of earth’s orbit around the sun. It doesn’t have to be that way. We are cultural beings and need frameworks in our lives. A fatal flaw of the relentlessly mathematical calendar of the French Revolution was that it did not allow for these important life-shaping markers. Hence, it failed miserably only a few years after its installation. As human beings we need more, and we can have more if we want to.

So, should you celebrate Christmas when you don’t believe? I think: by all means do. Should you make the most out of your Christmas and choose for yourself what you want to get out of it? Likewise: go ahead. Whatever people have ever felt and celebrated at this time of year, wherever they were or whatever they did, it remains a special occasion and it is part of our culture. Nowadays, the holiday has become an almost global event and it is celebrated in countries where you would never expect it – even if it’s only on a commercial basis. Perhaps it no longer has a religious meaning to many of us, perhaps it doesn’t even have much of a meaning at all, but whatever you do, I hope you have a warm, safe and peaceful one. Oh, and you can send all the cards you like: they first appeared in 1843, cost a shilling each and were entirely non-religious.