I think atheists, those that blog anyway, write about this every year. What is that? Why do you celebrate Christmas if you don’t believe in God or Jesus? It’s tiring answering the same question year after year. I was going to go ahead and write about it anyway. Then I came to my senses. Personally, I don’t owe anyone any explanation of what holidays I celebrate or not. If anyone wants to know the real history of Christmas, they can easily perform an online search.
As I continue to say in these pages, atheists are no different than anyone else in the general population with the exception (maybe) that the atheist doesn’t believe in any gods. It leaves our weekends open (Friday is a Muslim holy day, Saturday, Jewish). Just like anyone else, we can choose to believe, or not believe what we want. What’s the old joke by atheists? I just believe in one god less than you. That’s all we are. Until we see evidence otherwise, we remain skeptical of the supernatural, just as most people are skeptics of Bigfoot, Ancient Aliens, or the Loch Ness Monster.
Most people I know, religious or not are skeptics. for instance ask people if they believe in any of the above, most will smile, or outright laugh, and say no. Why? there’s no evidence that supports their existence no matter what you see on The Discovery Channel (That used to be a science oriented channel. Now?). How about all of the shows on cable concerning ghosts or hunting ghosts? All of these remain on television because they attract an audience of a certain size but in reality, how many of those watching believe what they’re watching is true?
So please stop asking atheists why they celebrate (or don’t) Christmas. It really has become annoying and unless you can explain why or why not you believe in something, without evidence, then think about what it’s like time and again to attempt to answer the same old questions.
Conservative Skeptic 
Well, I can’t speak for other atheists, but I celebrate Christmas not because it’s a Christian festival, which it isn’t, and not because it’s a Pagan festival, which it is if it’s anything, but simply because it’s a great excuse to celebrate something and to drink a few beers in the dark days of midwinter. If Christmas didn’t exist I would personally invent it for that very reason. Of course I’m not crazy about the phony Christian mask it’s forced to wear, but that won’t last forever, and in the meantime if there’s any chance that it will offend some loudmouthed Islamist toe rag or some self-hating multicultural PC thumb sucker then I’m more than happy to celebrate Christmas with all the bells and whistles I can muster, Baby Jesus and all. So you could say that I celebrate Christmas, at least in part, for religious reasons, and I never thought I’d hear myself say those words. Well, all right then, cultural reasons, but these days it’s so hard to tell the difference, isn’t it? Having said all that, I do have to wonder why Christianity is allowed to hog the entire religious cake at Christmas. What happened to diversity and mutual understanding and cultural awareness and respect and bridge-building and blah blah etcetera etcetera? Don’t tell me these are all just empty buzzwords. I don’t think it matters that Christians insist it’s all about Little Baby Jesus because I think most people realize that Christianity imposed itself on an older religion by hijacking its festivals, changing their names, and assiduously persecuting its followers, and that, frankly, Christianity’s claim on Christmas is nothing less than an affront to human decency, but, because it’s Christmas and we’re all in such a good mood we don’t really care. Personally, I think it’s a good idea to celebrate the solstice because we know it’s actually REAL. And, of course, it reminds us of the greater reality that this earth is, in fact, flying through space in an annual orbit around the sun, itself just a star among billions of stars in orbit around the black hole at the center of our galaxy, itself part of a cluster of galaxies, and that sometime in the future our galaxy will collide with the Andromeda galaxy which is presently hurtling towards us at a quarter of a million miles an hour. And there’s nothing that God or Allah or Little Baby Jesus or anybody else can do about that, no matter how many prayers we offer from now until it does happen about five billion years down the line. And that’s only if our sun hasn’t already swollen up to a red giant by then and incinerated the entire inner solar system, along with God, Allah, Little Baby Jesus, and all the other assorted pantomime characters of the human imagination, which itself will no longer even be a memory. Oh well, easy come easy go. Peace, and merry Christmas.
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Love the blog. Love the comments. Love the seasonal time for having special times with family, even though we all live on the same farm and most of us in the same house. Good food, good drink and a few presents all around, plus extras for the kidlings, 6, 4 and almost 2. And…puppies, oh gawd..4 puppies, which brings our dog total to 7 for this family. LOL
Should be utter joyful chaos…
Merry Christmas!
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I was annoyed because, yes, I was asked today, again. I just gave the person a blank stare and began talking about something else. I think he got the message.
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