I have always had a love-hate relationship with Christmas. Exacerbated by the fact that if you tell anyone you don’t celebrate it because you’re not Christian, you get no end of crap about it.
These days I don’t put much energy into thinking about it, and I do enjoy some of the festivities. And since I don’t work a 9-5 job with people, I don’t get many of those kinds of interactions about it.
I’m an atheist but I still celebrate the Christmas season, mostly because it makes me feel good and because I’m idealist enough to believe, and agree with, Ebenezer Scrooge’s nephew Fred Holywell when he says:
“Quite a few things from which I have not profited and may yet call “good”, I dare say. Christmas among them.
But I have always thought of Christmas time, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely to their fellow creatures.
And so, Uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver into my pocket, I do believe that it has done me good. And I say, God bless it.”
I can be an atheist and still enjoy the warm sentiment expressed here. And I do enjoy the spirit of camaraderie that Christmas brings. I try to add to it year round, but like Fred says — Christmastime is the one time of the year when others seem to help me out with that.
Your mileage may vary, of course. :)
cheers,
Phil
“Christmas” is Saturnalia, among other holidays. And pagans (“non-Christians) used to put greenery around, wreaths, trees, to cheer up the dead of winter, to remind them that spring will come. After all, the solstice is near that time.
So that’s what -I- tell people.