Sunday, November 25, 2007

Christmas is a secular holiday

Every once in awhile, a friend, or a friend of a friend, will try and trip me up about the whole agnosticism thing, and say that I'm REALLY a Christian, I just don't know it. This normally happens when I try to do a good thing for the sake of being good, or I use a common colloquialism like "God dammit" or some such. The most recent example of this was a question on how I could celebrate Christmas, if I didn't actually believe in the birth of Christ.

My answer? Christmas is now a secular holiday.

Here's what I've done for Christmas:

Decorated a miniature plastic pine tree with lights (and put the angel I got from mom on it).
Hung pretty baubles from my ceiling
Made gifts for my friends
Have plans for making good food for a Christmas party.

The closest thing I have to "Christian" in that list is that I have an angel on the tree, but that is more because it has to do with my mom than god.

The tree, if anything, is a pagan tradition, and the rest of them are recent American traditions (look it up if you don't believe me). Santa and Frosty get more airtime and association with this holiday than Jesus does.

I'm okay with people thinking that this religion has something to do with this day (even though Jesus, if he existed, was most likely born in the summer) and that's their they thing. But for me, Christmas is about gifts, Easter is about eggs, and Lent is only good for Fat Tuesday.

2 Comments:

At 9:57 PM, Blogger John J. said...

I agree, although I consider the "Christmas season" itself to be agnostic. I mean, after all, the Christians only hold it in late December because one of the architects of Catholicism wanted to keep celebrating Mitrhasmas Day. And the "return of Light to the world," that couldn't have anything to do with the equinox, not at all...

Enjoy your secular Christmas.

 
At 2:38 AM, Blogger The Red Queen said...

Wait- Christmas is supposed to be religious. And all this time I thought it was an excuse to drink eggnog with rum and trip out on sparkley lights. You learn something new everyday. ;)

 

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