Monday School: The so-called war on Chrstimas

Welcome back to Monday School! It’s still your “Rational Corrective To All That Nonsense They Tried To Teach You Yesterday!”

As the holidays approach, we’re seeing more of the drivel on the news about the alleged ‘War on Christmas’ which is another one of those war on a idea bullocks that really doesn’t make any sense and is used to enflame bigotry amongst the bible belt.

Despite the ignorance of the alleged assault on the holy day, today’s lesson comes from a question that a friend of mine was asked earlier this month by someone who was in need of some advice: Can Atheists celebrate Christmas without looking hypocritical?

It’s a very interesting question, and I will start off by giving the short answer: yes. I don’t think it makes any atheist a hypocrite to celebrate the holidays (not matter which one that happens to occur in December) with the family and friends. I’m sure there are more than a few people out there who think that it is hypocritical for an atheist to celebrate Christmas because they don’t believe Christ and God. If you don’t believe in the story, why take advantage of it with holidays and presents? Something along the lines of “You can’t have your cake and eat it too”.

While I can understand where some of these people are coming from, there’s nothing wrong with an atheist participating in any event as long as it’s not immoral. As long as there is no things like human sacrifice or anything that could harm someone, than I can’t see why there isn’t a single logical reason why an Atheist can’t participate in any event. Now if someone is suggesting that Atheists are “taking advantage” of the holiday by dropping a couple of G’s to support the modern capitalist state and its 1% overlords, well then… I guess we’re guilty as charged.

What many supporters of the Christian holiday fail to understand is that the original celebration in December used to be something completely different that was eventually hijacked and assimilated by Christianity and the birth date of their alleged messiah. Many of the traditions used today (such as decorated trees) are stolen from Pagan traditions, part of that whole assimilation I was referring to. What many people celebrate today is more a potluck of plagiarized and stolen traditions rather than the same celebration that started oh so long ago.

The Christmas we know and love to celebrate has absolutely nothing to do with Jesus. I am quite confident that the alleged JC would be horrified by the way Christmas is celebrated today. First off, Jesus was against the rich and capitalism as he often preached that he wanted the ‘faithful’ to give away everything you have to the poor. In other words the late JC was a bleeding heart socialist. If Christ ever existed (which I doubt) I think he would be totally against the commercial and capitalist holiday his birthday has become today.

If anyone managed to crack a single history book, they’d know that Christmas was originally celebrated with Epiphany on January 6th, one of the Church’s earliest established feasts. In its early years, many Church leaders opposed the idea of celebrating the birth of Christ. Some leaders like Origen (c.185 – c.254) preached that it would be wrong to honor Christ in the same way that Pharaoh and Herod were honored. Birthdays were for pagan gods.

I just find it completely funny how the religion that’s against gluttony and having a bunch of material possessions is totally okay with the holiday that is ALL about gluttony and material possessions.

Religious people just crack me up.

And yet Conservative Christians continue to attacked non-Christians such as myself for waging the so-called war on Christmas. The truth is atheists like me don’t really have a problem with most of the holiday, just with those who try to push the religious aspect of it on everyone, especially through public offices. There’s nothing religious about putting up lights on your house. There is nothing religious about telling the kids about Santa Claus and being naughty or nice as is there anything about sharing gifts with one another. People are more obsessed with getting the new i-phone than they are heading out to holiday mass, and if we want to preach a real war on Christmas, how about the commercializing of the holiday by the greedy capitalists?

As is so often the case, however, the real conflict here isn’t between atheists and Christians but among Christians themselves. Christmas is merely one more issue in a long list of issues that the alleged followers of Jesus have never been able to agree on. While I hope each and every one of those followers will someday come to their senses and see the logic and wisdom of rejecting all religious beliefs and rituals, my primary concern with regards to their holidays is that they not try to use the power of the state to impose their ways of celebrating on society as a whole. That’s not a war on Christmas but a necessary defense of the religious neutrality of our government.

But as I attempted to explain above, the holiday as its celebrated today really isn’t anything their so-called messiah (whose birthday they’re allegedly celebrating) would approve of, and that’s based on the words from the same book everyone claims to believe to be the word of God. So if anyone is truly being hypocritical on the holy day… that would be the religious folks who can’t even follow the word of their own God rather than the heathen atheists. I strongly suggest that the religious try following the guidelines set down by their own alleged messiah before they start telling people how to properly celebrate the holidays.

So in conclusion: clean your own backyard before complaining about the state of someone else’s. In other words if you’re going to complain about how one person celebrates a specific holiday, you had better check up and make sure you’re doing it right before jumping onto that soap box.

Peter