What It’s Like to be an Atheist/Agnostic at Christmas
I think that Mark Traphagen does a pretty good job of explaining some of my thoughts as an atheist at this time of year, too.
I still struggle a bit with singing Christmas carols; at least with the clearly religious ones. Same with listening to some of the great classical choral works centered on Christmas, such as Handel’s “Messiah,” but those are a bit easier, as I don’t have to listen to the words quite as much and can simply enjoy the music. I feel the pull of going to my parents’ church service (Episcopalian) tonight to sing those carols with others and the organ……but it feels dishonest to be in a church. I listen to the words of those around me and think, “but it’s not real!”, so I probably won’t go.
The Christmas celebration at our home is probably most awkward for our older daughter, as she is a devout Christian, while the rest of us aren’t. There are no overtly Christian displays in our home, just the more secular stuff, llike Santa and Frosty and pretty balls on the tree handed down from the family or purchased as reminders of family trips. We don’t really talk about it, though, so I don’t really know how she feels.
We still “celebrate” Christian holidays like Christmas and Easter, but we leave out the religious aspects, and that’s still kind of odd for me. I agree with Mark that it gets easier to just focus on being with family and friends.
We are trying to put less focus this year on presents, particularly with our daughter, Lizzie. Being pretty well off, it would be easy to get all materialistic, but we don’t want her growing up just expecting lots of gifts. I’d hoped to do much more with giving this year, but our work schedule was so exhausting that we didn’t. Going to change that for 2017.
Anyway…….Merry Christmas to all my friends who celebrate it; Happy Hanukkah to all my friends who celebrate that; and Happy Festivus to the rest of us!