The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas (10 page)

START A GREEN TRADITION

There’s no escaping the fact that December comes around every year. Still, coming up with new strategies every twelve months for avoiding “traditional” rituals (both religious and consumerist) soon becomes very tedious, so why not start your own personal secular traditions for marking the middle of winter and, while you’re at it, make these green activities too?

Some of the most heartwarming things about family holidays at home follow these lines already. Whether it’s a game of Monopoly after dinner, a sing-along with Granddad playing the spoons, or dusting off primary school tree decorations made from pasta, these are some of the family rituals that, for me, make Christmas something worth taking part in, rather than being cynical about.

If you are now in charge of a family yourself, take advantage of your power and impose some homespun green traditions on your own kids. Perhaps you can help instill an interest in nature by spicing up a family walk with an annual competition to find and photograph animal footprints in the mud (or snow, if you’re really lucky). Or make decorating the house more ecofriendly by setting aside a Saturday for making painted paper chains in a child labor factory disguised as a “fun art project.”

The tree has plenty of potential for making a secular Christmas greener. A symbol of nature devoid of religious meaning, it’
s also ripe for adding your own traditions and having its impact on the planet reduced. The question of which is the best choice—artificial or natural—is one of the classic green arguments, with commercial interests on both sides putting out press releases claiming theirs is the greener option in the long run.

Personally, I’m not convinced by the claim that artificial trees are best, partly because I like the smell of a real tree so much, and partly because metal, tinsel, and plastic still release plenty of nasties as they are manufactured (unlike a growing tree). They are also virtually impossible to recycle once they wear out, and I don’t believe they are reused as many times as the manufacturers claim.

So, on balance, a well-managed tree farm—ideally not too far from your house—is the better option. Try to find one that allows you to plant a replacement tree as part of a day out—something kids will love. And remember that each year 6 million conifers end up in landfills, so when you have finished with your felled tree, make sure to use your local tree recycling service.

If you have the space outside, you can do even better by using a growing tree that lives in your garden most of the year and is brought inside for a couple of weeks in December. This has lots of advantages, including seeing your tree grow up with your family, and a huge reduction in needles trapped in the carpet pile.

AND FINALLY . . .

Remember, whatever advice you follow, don’t let your efforts get in the way of having a very merry Christmas!

Chapter 18
How to Stop Worrying and Enjoy Christmas

M
ITCH
B
ENN

I’ve always been a huge fan of Christmas. In most of my early childhood memories I’m either ecstatic ’cos it’s Christmas, beside myself with excitement because it’s nearly Christmas, or glum because it won’t be Christmas for
ages
. Now that I’m a dad I love Christmas more than ever. I love Christmas from the bottom of my godless atheist straight-through-Dawkins-and-out-the-other-side heathen heart. Love it.

And yet . . .

Every year when Christmas hoves into view I find myself wading through another slew of articles and op-ed pieces about how I’m wrong to enjoy Christmas, how my love of the season marks me out as foolish or shallow, how my ability to take simple joy in simple things means I’m, well, simple.

On the one hand, proselytizers of every stamp tell us through pursed lips that what we call “Christmas” is a lie, a betrayal and bastardization of its “true” self. Meanwhile, the hipsters and style Nazis wax scornful on the naffness of Christmas and the patent rubbishness of anyone suckered in by such a woeful enterprise in crapness (they like their “nesses,” those types).

This should, by all that’s right and proper, be a completely redundant article. Of all the days in the year, the day no one should need to be told how to enjoy is Christmas. Least of all unbelievers like us.

Most of the year round we’re the lucky ones in this respect—those of us fortunate enough not to be in thrall to ancient scriptures are generally freer to, in the words of the bus advertisement, “stop worrying and enjoy our lives.” But Christmas is different, marked as it is with that whopping great “Christ” taking up the first two-thirds of its name. As the fearless rejecters of religion, shouldn’t we be rejecting Christmas as well?

Nope.

Not at all. It’s okay, really it is. I’ll explain.

Of course, before I start, I must admit that I may have this easier than many of you, as I was what I once heard Jonathan Miller call a “cradle atheist.” I was raised by non-religious parents in a n
on-religious household, I was—and remain—unchristened and unbaptized into any faith, and my attitude to religion has always been one of casual disinterest tinged with amusement and bemusement.

So I have never “rejected” religion, as it was never in my life to reject. I’ve never had to take a stand, nail my colors to the atheist mast, put my money where my mouth is, or resort to any other defiant cliché. I can see how someone “raised in the faith” who subsequently turned against that faith might feel obliged to purge his or her life of all aspects of observance, and how Christmas might be one of the things that needed purging. But in our house, while we didn’t do God, we did do Christmas, and that’s how it is in my own house now. Some might perceive an insoluble contradiction in t
his, but there really isn’t, or at least there needn’t be.

What it all comes down to is a question: what
is
Christmas? And the answer—for all of us, believer or otherwise—is that Christmas is whatever you want it to be.

You see, Christmas, like all living things, is evolving. It’s been through many phases and guises and it’ll go through many more. Given that the “eat, drink, and be merry” aspect of Christmas predates the “O Come, All Ye Faithful” bit by a considerable margin, and could even be said to take precedence over it, what then is the “true” meaning?

The answer, again, is whichever you prefer. Those of you who wish to restrict your participation in Christmas to reverent, even solemn observance of the rites and customs pertaining to the day in your particular faith, knock yourself out. Those of us who choose to celebrate Christmas in the traditional, pre-Christian manner (at least as it manifests itself in the modern era—basically eating forty mince pies and then slipping into unconsciousness on the sofa) may do so with a clear conscience. Spiritually, anyway. Nutritionally, that’s another matter.

But shouldn’t we, if we’re going to ignore the “Christ” part of Christmas, find something else to call it?

This has been a divisive question in recent years, with right-wing commentators denouncing a pernicious, surreptitious, and largely imaginary (as these things almost inevitably are) assault by the forces of political correctness (boo!) on good ol’ Christmas in particular and on Christian values in general.

Leaving aside the fact that nearly all the incidents of which this political correctness was supposed to consist turned out to be vastly exaggerated, if not completely made up (Google the word
Winterval
for a choice example of this), all of this is pointless divisive nonsense and entirely unnecessary because . . .

It’s just a name.

That’s all. It’s just a name.
Christmas
is the name most of the English-speaking world currently gives the winter solstice
festival, and it’s as good a name for it as any other it’s ever had. Yes, it’s the name given to it by the Christian church in order to pay reverence to their figurehead Jesus Christ, as evinced by the aforementioned whopping great
Christ
at the beginning, but so what? It’s just a name, and the name of a thing can’t be held to determine its form and function for all time, whatever the “reason for the season” crowd might claim.

Not convinced? Okay then, what day is it today? I have no idea what day it is where you are, but I’m typing this on a Wednesday. As such, I, in common with all respecters of tradition, have dedicated today to the glory of Odin. Man, I love Wednesdays. Bit of oar-running, bit of pillage, bit of—well, we’ll crack open a bottle of mead and see where the evening takes us, shall we?

Maybe you’re reading this on a Friday, in which case I do hope you remembered to honor the goddess Freya this morning. Seriously, you know how she gets.

This book is due out for the Christmas market, so perhaps you’re reading it in November or December, which are, obviously, the ninth and tenth months of the year. And once Christmas is out of the way I’m certain you’ll all be sure to see in the New Year by making sacrificial offerings to the Roman god Janus.

You see where I’m going with this? Christmas is named—as is just about everything else in the calendar—after a religious rite or holy day, but the mere fact that, unlike the Norse and Roman gods, Jesus Christ is still worshiped by some people, doesn’t make the name any more “sacred” than that of any other day.

Moreover, if anyone tells you that the name “Christmas” renders December 25 a uniquely and quintessentially Christian affair, then you might ask him what he’s going to call Easter from now on, ’cos if the name of a festival dictates its nature, then Easter—named for the goddess Oestre—has nowt whatsoever to do with the crucifixion or resurrection of anybody, and is still the frolicsome spring equinox fertility rite it always used to be. (Yes, it is; what do you think eggs and bunny rabbits are supposed to symbolize?) If the person in question is American, you might further inquire
as to whom he considers to be the founder of his nation. Deduct a point for every name he suggests before he gets around to the Renaissance Italian cartographer Amerigo Vespucci.

(If you’re still in the mood, ask him why people in New York don’t drink bitter, wear flat caps, and say “ ’appen” instead of “yes.” You’ll have made your point by now and just be annoying him, but what the heck.)

This has all become a bit baroque, so by way of summary let me say this: if only practicing Christians can use the word “Christmas,” then only Vikings can use the word “Thursday.”

Of course, if you’d rather
not
call it Christmas, either because your own culture has a name for the season that you feel should take precedence (in which case, happy Hanukkah and thanks for reading this far) or because you just plain don’t want to, that’s fine too. But if you’d like to call it Christmas, either for the sake of cultural cohesion (still a good thing even without God at its center) or just for ease and convenience, then it’s okay to do so. You’re not trespassing on anybody’s exclusive territory. It’s fine. Go ahead. Say it. Christmas. There. That wasn’t so bad, was it? Christmas. It’s easy. Christmas. It’
s not even pronounced “Christ’s mass” any more, it’s “krissmuss.” If anything, it sounds like it’s been named in honor of somebody called Chris. Hark the angelic host proclaim, Chris is born in Bethlehem. Aw, how nice. Must send Chris’ mom and dad something.

All good, insofar as it goes, but even if we’re going to use the word “Christmas,” surely we should forswear all the churchy rigmarole that goes with it, the carol services, the Nativity plays, and all that. Again, if you want to, fine, but if you don’t want to—if your little darling gets cast as Mary and you don’t feel li
ke ruining her whole year by droning on and on about the historical inconsistencies in the gospels and the scientific implausibility of virgin births, if you find yourself in the mood to sneak into church on Christmas Eve and give “God Rest Ye . . .” some welly—this is all perfectly okay and in
no way
a betrayal of your Deeply Held Atheist Principles. Mainly because there’s no such
thing
as Deeply Held Atheist Principles—it’s not a belief system, it’s the absence of one—but also because the Christmas story, like all the great legends, is still a rich and meaningful tale even if you don’t believe any of it act
ually happened.

Just about the only thing I loved anywhere near as much as Christmas when I was a kid was
Star Wars
. I think I learned a great deal about sacrifice, strength, and perseverance from the tale of Luke Skywalker’s quest to face and ultimately redeem his fallen father, and the Force is as vivid an analogy for the human spirit’s capacity for good and evil as I’ve ever encountered, but I never thought it was, like, true or anything.

Similarly, the tale of Jesus is deep, fascinating, and moving; God Himself takes human form and lives a whole life among the mortals before being betrayed and murdered by His own creations in an attempt to offer the supreme moral example. It’s ripping stuff, let’s face it. Frank Herbert couldn’t have done better. The fact that little if any of it is based on historical fact is neither here nor there, and to pretend that this story hasn’t played a massive part in the evolution of our civilization is disingenuous to say the least, even if we as freethinkers recognize that human mora
lity is not derived from religious ethics (it’s the other way round).

In any case, let’s be honest—to what extent is Christmas actually about Christ anyway? We’ve developed a predominantly secular, post-Christian iconography for the festival . . . for every Baby Jesus one sees at this time of year, there are ten snowmen, or Christmas trees, or Santas (who may be supposed to be a saint but is a fairly pagan figure in appearance and demeanor, not to mention the fact that he’s at least partly a Coca-Cola commercial).

We’ve even—since 1843 at least—acquired our own post-Christian Christmas myth. Dickens’
A Christmas Carol
acknowledges Christmas’ religious foundations and has a healthy dose of the supernatural (and ends with the most famous “God bless us” in literary history), but it’s a very human tale of the redemptive power of a festival celebrating all that makes life—
this
life—worth living. And it’s this story that is told and retold every year, with literally dozens of film adaptations littering the festive TV schedules (there’s a particularly underrated version starring George C. Scott I’m alw
ays looking out for), while the supposed
actual
Christmas story, the Nativity, is confined to primary school assembly halls and that Frankie Goes to Hollywood video.

So—celebrate Christmas
if
you want to,
how
you want to, and call it what you like while you’re doing it. It’s as much ours as it is anybody else’s, and as much everybody else’s as it is ours. And so, as Tiny Tim would have observed if he’d grown up in my house, random circumstance and the smooth operation of the laws of the universe bless us, every one!