Comfort and Joy: Christmas for an Atheist

“You are fettered,” said Scrooge, trembling. “Tell me why?”

“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.”

-Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

            The guns were silent across much of the Western front on Christmas day of 1914 when approximately 100,000 men in the British, Belgian, French and German armies called a truce for the day. By some accounts it began as Christmas carols emanated from the opposing trenches, which were often separated by no more than 100 yards, culminating in the two sides singing together. How the truce itself began and spread along the front is debated, but what we do know is that many soldiers exchanged gifts of food, cigarettes and other items, and makeshift soccer balls would be kicked around between the men of enemy nations who’d been sent out to kill one another. This was to the vexation of the commanders who feared their troops might recognize how similar they really were to their enemy, adopt a “live and let live” mentality and lose the will to fight. Though troubling to the military leaders, these are the very reasons the Christmas Truce has become immortalized. Even if only for a single day, masses of men whose job it was to annihilate or be annihilated recognized their brother’s as such and, in what is the paragon of the spirit of Christmas, made merry and even had the audacity to enjoy their common company amid the start of a war which would steal the lives of nearly 10 million soldiers and almost 10 million civilians.

            Symbolic of how the Christmas season is about emphasizing our likeness as brothers and sisters and coming together to make peace, the story of the Christmas Truce begs us to ask, if they can come together and make merry, why can’t we?

            Christmas Spirit morality would, however, be left incomplete without reference to Charles Dickens’ candid and percipient novella A Christmas Carrol, where the main character Ebenezer Scrooge is the personification of pure materialistic greed. We the readers are taught the necessity of viewing one’s own life from a third party perspective, holding up a mirror so that we can ask whether we really are giving our best (or any) efforts to live a life well loved. Not until he is forced by the Ghost of Christmas Past to watch his younger self putting his greed into action does Scrooge see how he's affected others and forged the chains of his current loveless existence. 

            The central moral to A Christmas Carol is that we reap what we sow (although there is also socialist appeals throughout). We all aspire to be desired and to be remembered. To love and be loved adds a certain fullness to life. Our legacy in this temporal world is our only opportunity to live on past our death, and all decent people want that legacy to be one well remembered. In order to create a future life and legacy we can be proud of, the holiday season encourages us to acknowledge and inspect the chains we may be forging for ourselves.

            None of this, you might have noticed, involves any justification from or grounding in religion. The holiday celebrations have very unchristian origins as an alcohol-enhanced Nordic solstice celebration that was co-opted by Christianity (which also presents us with a very questionable “reason for the season”). There was some revisionist work done by the New Testament authors to place Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem (to fulfill the Old Testament prophecy) by positing a census which required people to return to their home towns. The issue with this is that the census describe doesn’t seem to have taken place. There is no record of it, nor of a Jewish man performing miracles and being crucified. This is quite a giveaway considering what good record keepers of such public events the Romans were. Even so, people weren't required to journey to their hometowns for censuses and, if they had, then it wouldn’t have occurred in the winter. 

            Further, none of the values we attribute to the Christmas season depend on religion or religious belief. Has someone ever given a convincing reason why you or I should believe, on no evidence and against reason, that a man was born via parthenogenesis and was the son of the creator of the universe (who we also must believe exists)? Or, that if we do not believe in this man’s existence, forsake this life to follow his teachings, and give incessant praise for this Dear Leader who knows all of our actions as well as thoughts, then we will be condemned to torture for all eternity (such is the boundless mercy of His love)? And why must one believe such unbelievable and immoral propositions to appeal to the common humanity we all share, practice self-reflection and spread joy to others? Rejecting these assumptions, we can easily designate the holiday and its December season to reminding ourselves to turn our attention inward and meditate on the love we have and whether our actions are increasing or decreasing the deserved happiness of those around us. The holiday has fortunately become something secular, though has unfortunately also become a consumerist, shallow time of year with much though not all of the gift-giving being more akin to an obligation to spend lots of money than a time to express appreciation through more meaningful gestures.

            I was lucky enough myself to never be indoctrinated with the trappings of Christianity, so this holiday, full of joy as it is, is entirely secular for myself. Religious though my father was (and that my mother’s family is), Christmas never was a religious event for me growing up. On Christmas Eve my parents, brother and I would tune into TBS for the 24 hour marathon of A Christmas Story while drinking hot cocoa. During Christmas dinner with our relatives, the closest we come to a prayer is the lighthearted reference to National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation where we all say “grace” (“The Blessing!”) instead of anything recognizable as an actual prayer. Despite a family who is modestly religious, Christmas never involved any recognition, praise of, or giving of thanks for the alleged birth of Jesus. In fact, the only aspect of my Christmases that is recognizably religious is the tradition I began in high school of attending Christmas Eve mass with my best friend and his family. (I first went before I realized I was an atheist, and liked the church because on my first visit they told a non-religious parable which emphasized the moral of happiness being a choice - a result of one’s mindset and chosen response to circumstances.)

            Never having had religion placed at the center of the holiday season, it becomes apparent how I so easily dispel it from the whole Christmas enterprise. It simply isn't necessary.

Holiday's cause us to get along for a day by emphasizing our similarities and putting aside all of our minor differences, whether of different ethnicity, language, class, or what have you. I tell you the truth, we want to spread comfort and joy and we feel and intrinsic satisfaction at being the cause of this feeling in others. The experiences these actions evoke in ourselves and others are reason enough to embrace the urge to act upon them. As for popular traditions, I enjoy the movies, the cookies, the shopping mall Santas, the Christmas lights, and I enjoy giving thoughtful gifts and reminding the people I care about that they never go unappreciated. I use the season as a time to reflect on myself and how I am imacting the lives of everyone around me. This is how I approach Christmas as a nonbeliever, and why I continue to celebrate it every December. 
Happy Christmas, friends.