Christmas redux

[ysobel]

[I wish this answer had been the other way around, starting with "you don't have to do Christmas to bring joy to winter" and then adding a P.S. about commercial Christmas. Right now it reads more like "Do Christmas or something similar, or you're a miserable person"...]

Dear Amy: My husband and I are atheists. We are getting some pushback from family members because we have decided not to celebrate Christmas. We have a young child who seemed a little confused about why Santa wasn’t going to visit our house, but we don’t want to push religious messages in our household. We’d like a second (really a sixth or seventh) opinion.

— Atheist Parents

Parents: For many people, Christmas is more a commercial celebration than a religious one. If you wanted to, it would be possible to do the whole Christmas shebang without ever delving into any Christian thought or belief. (Yes, most of us know that Saint Nicholas was a Christian saint, but Santa Claus is a jolly reindeer pilot.) And you don’t have to welcome Santa into your household to enjoy your own traditions at Christmastime, based more around the winter solstice than Jesus’ birth. You could research worldwide winter celebrations, and design your own.

Bringing light, laughter, and the joys of baking and decorating into the household when the days are short and the nights long and dark is a great way to celebrate the passing of the seasons.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

The answer is way too short and doesn't address the kids at all!!!

I don't like this answer.

Sure, they don't have to celebrate anything if they don't want to. But they need to give the kids some way of understanding why they are different from what their friends are doing! And I agree it might be fun and also good for the kids to create their own winter holiday.

[watersword]

If you need me I will be banging my head on the table until further notice. (Thank you for tagging this!)

[conuly]

If you're determined not to do Santa or Christmas at all then I think the thing to do is to a. tell your child honestly that it's a celebration of a god you don't believe in b. tell them Santa is very much not real and every grown-up knows it and is just playing pretend (don't tell your friends, kid!) and c. tell the rest of the family to butt out or get their phones blocked.

And it's absolutely okay to not do any celebration, including an atheist/secular one. It's not the path I would choose, but it's a valid option.

[castiron]

Yes, many people observe Christmas as a commercial or secular celebration without bringing in the religious aspects (exhibit A: my household), but it's still a holiday with religious roots -- it's right there in the name. I completely support these parents in their decision not to celebrate a religious holiday in their atheist home.

That said, "why doesn't Santa visit our house?" may well translate as "why don't I get presents when all my friends do?" You can decide that you're not going to do presents at all, in which case you simply explain to your kid that Santa is a story from Christian tradition and it's actually the parents giving their kids presents; you can also decide that you're going to keep the presents, but do them as New Year's gifts or on some other date that's meaningful (including an entirely different time of year).

[ethelmay]

My ex-JW friend does solstice presents. Breaks several patterns at once, but also kind of blends in with commercial Christmas (in terms of kids feeling not too weird at school and so forth).

[mrissa]

I totally agree with your note, Ysobel. "You can do things like baking to celebrate the passing of the midwinter, yay!" with a footnote of "If you want it can be a secular Christmas, or not, whatever works for you" would have changed the tone significantly--and much for the better. It would at least have been a start.

[oursin]

Or, though I'm not sure this would actually turn out like that, you could give them a massive sense of superiority of Not Believing In All That.

I knew somebody who was brought up by very Strict and Particular Atheist Humanists (I also knew her mother but this never arose in the course of our interactions) and they did Not Do Christmas, treated it like an ordinary day. For some reason this actually got reported in the local paper, but as this was Hampstead or Hampstead-adjacent I don't know why it was even news.

[dissectionist]

My partner and I are both atheists and chose to do Xmas because it’s really fun and neither of us wanted to take that joy away from our kids. There was never any church or Jesus or anything like that involved, just time spent together, making cookies, exchanging presents, and listening to the goat versions of Xmas carols once that became a thing. We did Easter as a dyed-eggs-and-chocolate holiday too.

So I agree with the advice that if someone doesn’t want to have a version of Christmas that meets their needs, then don’t, but it’s good to replace it with something else. Take some of the fun traditions that often accompany winter holidays and do them in another way that works. It’s such a bleak time of year in the northern hemisphere; why not do something to bring a little warmth and light for the kids?

[goljerp]

For many people, Mass is more a social experience than a religious one. If you wanted to, it would be possible to do the whole church shebang without delving into any Christian thought or belief. (Yes, most of us know that the communion wine becomes the blood of christ, but who doesn't like crackers and wine?).

Apologies on the above to those who are Christian, but really, this whole "oh, Christmas isn't really religious" is only possible to think if you're so immersed in Christianity that you don't recognize it, just like you don't notice the air you're breathing (unless it's full of smoke from Canadian wildfires...)

Athiest, but want to light candles in the winter? Investigate Kwanza. Or Festivus. Or as others said, solstice. Or celebrate June half-birthdays. Don't pretend a religious holiday isn't.