The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas (14 page)

Chapter 26
Beloved Buzzkill

A
LLISON
K
ILKENNY

What’s the harm, I thought, if good people believed in a fictitious male figure who lived somewhere above here and listened to their hopes and prayers? After all, Santa seems harmless enough—so why not God? It wasn’t like my believer friends and family were waging holy wars, bashing gay people, or burning crosses on black people’s lawns. Generally speaking, they were smart liberals who also happened to believe Jesus turned water into wine, which to me is weird.

Maybe people think I’m weird, I thought. I was a vegan atheist growing up in the Midwest. I was practically an alien.

So I stayed quiet about the non-believer thing.

My silence lasted through college. It’s remarkably easy to avoid existential confrontations and lengthy theological discussions when one’s schedule primarily consists of getting shitfaced in between panicked, last-minute cram sessions. I graduated and moved to New York City, where I started working at a bookstore. Though I was surrounded by thousands of books harboring millions of ideas, God still didn’t come up in conversation. Co-workers and customers like to keep chatter light and pleasant during working hours: the crappy weather, plans to drink next weekend and mate with the new regis
ter girl, and so on.

In fact, God didn’t come up until I unexpectedly fell in love.

It happened on the day I wore my Superman T-shirt. There I was, probably staring off into space, which is how I spent 90 percent of my day at work, when a young man’s face filled my vision. He was saying something. I could tell because his lips were moving.

“I have your shirt.” That’s what he said.

“What?” I replied.

“Well, not that one. Mine’s a guy’s shirt—it’s the guy’s
version
of that shirt. Nothing. I—I’m sorry,” he stammered.

Then he was gone.

I would later learn the young man’s name is Jamie, and he’s not always that inarticulate. In fact, he’s an extremely smart comedian who loves Bill Hicks (swoon), politics, and considers himself a bit anti-authoritarian.

We turned out to be terrible booksellers, although we were excellent at spending every day huddled at the main information desk, talking about absolutely everything. We expelled chatter in the excited, breathless way children do at sleepovers when the lights are out, when it feels like there’s just not enough time in the universe to share all the ideas buzzing around one’s head. And when we actually started dating, our productivity level plummeted further. Our managers were furious. They did everything in their power to separate us, but like a retail Romeo and Juliet, we defied
the fascist restraints of our overlords and rendezvoused behind book stacks to chat for hours.

And God never once came up. Until, that is, Jamie and I were attempting to coordinate our holiday break schedules so I could visit his hometown to celebrate Christmas with his family. He was trying to explain to me the distinctly modern faith amalgam of his familial unit in order to brace me for the eclectic hybrid of Chanukah-Christmas celebrations.

“Well, my dad’s Jewish, but really more culturally Jewish. He’s not
Jewy
Jewish. Someone usually reads from the Torah, but only for a couple minutes. Then my mom’s Christian, but we never went to church much. She prays sometimes, but not in the crazy speaking-in-tongues way,” he said, all the while glancing at me, seemingly waiting for me to chime in with my own set of beliefs.

When I said nothing, he continued, “Personally, I don’t consider myself Jewish or Christian.” I perked up a bit here. Could Jamie be an ath—“But I do believe there’s
something
.”

My heart sank. “Something?”

He started gesturing with his hands, the palms up. “Yeah, not like a judgmental psychopath God, but
something
. I don’t know. How else can you explain all the beautiful shit in the world?”

Biology. Evolution. Physics.
A thousand explanations immediately flooded my brain, but I just smiled and nodded. After all, I liked Jamie a lot, and I didn’t want to come across as a shrill heathen. I could pretend to believe a little longer.

But Jamie saw through me. “You’re not . . . like . . . agnostic, are you?”

I felt nauseated. “Um, I’m . . . an atheist.”

I thought Jamie was going to faint. He turned pale. His eyes widened. I can’t be sure, but I think he twitched.

One of us changed the subject.

When we put in for our vacations, we ended up getting more time off than initially expected. Jamie planned a pre-holiday celebration detour to Niagara Falls, which would take us hours out of the way. Nothing could have been better.

It’s amazing how love puts a shiny coat on the worst circumstances. Traffic becomes a conversation-elongater. The crowds of Niagara tourists are the Multitudes Who Shall Witness Our Love. The freezing weather makes huddling together for warmth a delightful necessity.

Everything was amazing as we shivered side by side, gazing down at nature’s majesty. Truly, it was one of those moments where words seem utterly inadequate. I felt small and humble, and all I could do was watch the roaring, voluminous falls crash into the huge boulders at the base, kicking up clouds of mist.

“See, like this,” Jamie said. “How can you explain something beautiful like this? God must have done this.”

I almost nodded again, if only to quickly squelch the conversation and return to the serenity of silence. But then something occurred to me. By believing that “God did it,” Jamie was missing out on a much more interesting story, and I was guilty for facilitating his ignorance.

No one could blame a person like Jamie for simply being somewhat ignorant about certain things. However, a person like me—someone
who knows better
—is the worst kind of ignorance-enabler. How could I claim to love this person if I insisted on allowing him to believe something that simply isn’t true?

“Actually . . . ,” I gently began.

And so I told Jamie about how Niagara Falls was created when the Wisconsin glacier receded during the last ice age.

To my great surprise, Jamie didn’t immediately scream,
“Burn her!”
and tie me to a stake. At first he seemed thoughtful, and then the floodgates opened.

He wanted to know everything. How did flower petals get their color? How did the planets form? What is a star? I did my best to answer his questions to the fullest extent of my ability. Sometimes I didn’t know what to say, so I pointed him toward the experts: Richard Dawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and on and on. When the experts could take the answer only so far, I explained to Jamie that the limits of human understanding don’t prove God stands on the horizon.

Before there was an understanding of gravity, humans believed God explained why an apple falls down but never up. When Newton provided a satisfactory answer, God took a step backward. Each time scientists made another scientific discovery, God took another step backward.

Whenever something occurs that cannot be understood by science in that moment, the natural inclination is to throw up our hands and surrender: “God did it!”

A. C. Grayling made the observation that humans used to believe in multiple gods that lived in the trees, water, and bushes. They made the wind and controlled the tides. When human explorer
s searched all the trees and swam in the water and found no gods, their mythology changed.

Suddenly the gods didn’t live in the trees but resided in the mountains. And when human explorers walked high into the mountains and found no gods, the mythology relocated again. The gods lived in the sky, and now that humans have explored space and found no God, the Creator has taken on slightly more metaphysical properties. Perhaps God is the universe, or some laissez-faire force.

Of course, these are all desperate attempts at explaining why humans are not alone. The rationality is fear-based, which is understandable, but at this point—with all we know about science and the universe—inexcusable.

I told Jamie all of this, and at times I did feel a little like some monster adult telling a child there’s no Santa Claus. Jamie was (and is) a good person, and he used religion in the best possible ways: to help people and to act compassionately. Would I reverse that behavior by telling him these things?

On our way from the falls to his family’s house, I asked him how he felt about viewing the world scientifically rather than religiously. Jamie didn’t speak for a long time. He looked thoughtful, and for a moment I was terrified. Did he blame me for ruining the fairy tale? Did he reject my explanations? Had I become the buzzkill I had always fought so hard not to be?

“In a way,” Jamie began, “I think the world is more beautiful this way. I mean, before, I didn’t know the story behind how things work, but there’s so much . . .
more
to it now. And without believing in a heaven, or a God, and that stuff, it makes life so much more
valuable
now.”

“Valuable?” I asked.

“Yeah. I mean, we have to take care of each other because God’s not going to do it for us,” he said.

To my great relief, telling Jamie about my atheism and helping him to recognize his own atheism didn’t result in a devaluing of life. Rather, it enhanced his view of the world. Instead of believing some divine matchmaker had thrust us together against our will, Jamie now believes we had the extraordinary good fortune of finding each other in a sea of 6 billion people. And that’s just
so
much more interesting, and amazing, and something for which we should forever be grateful.

The best possible decision I ever made was to “come out” as an atheist. Now I know that it’s not inherently rude to combat the ignorance that is inherent in religion. In fact, I now know education is—by default—the enemy of religion, which loathes dissent and curiosity. My silence was enabling the worst, most corrosive aspects of religion.

Jamie is now one of the most outspoken atheists I know. I’ve witnessed him educate believers and usher them into a world of rationality. Sometimes I think about how many recovering God-believers we’ve helped, and how many would still subscribe to antiquated theology had I kept my mouth shut and never shared what I know with Jamie.

One of the happy by-products of love is the ability to grow together. By embracing reason, Jamie and I did just that. To us, this became our new spirit of Christmas. It was no longer a holiday meant to worship the birth of a now dead Palestinian who once claimed to be the Son of God but who is now used as a marketing ploy by huge corporations to sell more Xbox consoles. Christmas became a time to celebrate human connection, whether that is with family or friends, and to remember that sometimes the gift of knowledge is the best present you can give.

Chapter 27
Stay Away from My Goddamn Presents

J
AMIE
K
ILSTEIN

Christmas is my favorite holiday ever. There. I said it. Judge me all you want, but it’s out there in the ether. No taking it back. I am an anti-capitalist atheist, and the holiday that represents everything I loathe about our greedy, consumer-based, fairy-tale-worshiping country is my favorite holiday—hands down.

Really, Halloween? Candy is the best you got? Call me when you have a giant tree of awesomeness and lights illuminating
stacks of presents
! Disgusting.

I should have known any holiday that involves shameless bribery would turn out to be a scam. Kidnappers never trick anyone into their van with promises of peer-reviewed studies on Darwinian evolution. Worst. Kidnapping. Ever. But Christmas—with its awesome songs—could have dragged me into its van anytime.

That’s why, when I fell in love with a girl who tried to take Christmas from me, I had to put up a fight and remind myself it is unbecoming to strike women. Historically, people have made lots of mistakes for pretty girls—they’ve died, killed, and destroyed bands. No way this one was going to take away my presents and whatever the hell else Christmas is supposed to mean. (Something about a birthday and not letting gays marry? I don’t know. I never went to church.)

Before I met the vixen who wanted to rob me of my childhood, I believed in God for all the right reasons: when I wanted shit, I could pray to him; when I felt bad about doing something shitty, I would assume he would fix it; and, um . . . I don’t know what else . . .
presents
!

God was my fall guy, my wingman, my wish granter, you name it. Sure, if people really think He is almighty, we should probably be praying for Him to fix up that whole Middle East boom-boom thing, but if God is almighty, He can probably do that while simultaneously helping me find my keys, right? I need my keys, people.

It was a pretty great relationship, me and God. If I saw a homeless person and felt bad, I knew God would never let someone starve, so I didn’t need to do anything. (Africa who?) If I wanted to start smoking again, I knew God had a plan. Maybe if I started smoking again it was because I was meant to go into the corner store on Fo
rty-second Street to buy a pack of smokes, and at the same time it was being robbed, and I would be there to stop the robbery! Who else would stop it? Nobody! Just me—a tiny artist who is afraid of confrontation.

I didn’t need to go to church because I wasn’t a conformist, man. I was spiritual but not religious. Which I think just means I’m pro-choice, church bores me, but I don’t want to go to hell, and was keeping my options open. It was sweet living.

But then Allison came into my life with her
facts
. And
words
. That she read in
books
. The nerve of some people.

I fell in love with Allison pretty quickly. We were working at a bookstore, which is where smart, pretentious people who can’t get real jobs work. It’s retail, but we can read, so we assumed we were better than everyone else.

She listened to cooler music than I did, knew who Noam Chomsky was, liked Bill Hicks, and wanted Dane Cook dead. She was the smartest girl I had ever met.

We pretended we were just going to be friends. The façade lasted about a day. I remember during our time as “friends” we would meet up before the morning shift at the bookstore because “friends” love meeting at Central Park, hung over, at 6:00 a.m. before an eight-hour workday. I don’t care what joggers tell you—nobody wants to be up at six in the morning.

When we weren’t meeting in the park, we talked nonstop at work, huddled behind the main information desk. During one of those meetings, we did what most couples do: ask each other scary political questions and hold our breath, hoping the person we were just making out with doesn’t suddenly drop some horrible bombshell of crazy, like “Yeah, I know gays are
technically
people . . .”
Oh God, please don’t ruin this.
I believe it was our third date, which is when questions like this come into play. Not during the first date. If on the third date the person turns out to be crazy, at
least you got some make-out time in. But the third date is all romance and talk about your thoughts on abortion and the occupation of Gaza.

We matched up pretty nicely. We were both Democrats who hate the Democratic Party, both vegans and animal rights activists. Both of us despised the war, assumed Dick Cheney was a villain out of a cartoon, and cried at the movie
Serendipity,
with John Cusack . . . Okay, that was just me, but only because Allison doesn’t have a soul.

The conversation then turned to religion. I was pretty confident everything would be okay. Allison and I are pro-gay-rights and pro-women’s-rights, know about evolution, and think that maybe bombing Palestinian children isn’t worth Jesus coming back on a horse, or whatever weird Armageddon shit they had planned. We agreed on all of that! All was right in the world! But then this happened:

Jamie:
So you’re agnostic?

Allison:
No.

Jamie:
Wait . . . [
nervous laugh
] . . . you’re not an atheist, are you?

Allison:
Yeah. I’m an atheist.

I wish I could write this without having to tell you what my actual thoughts were, but for the sake of honesty, here we go. Allison told me she was an atheist, and my first thought—as an adult, as a progressive, non-religious adult—was, word for word, this:

Jamie’s brain:
You can’t be an atheist . . . you’ll burn in hell.

That was not fun to write. But it’s what I thought. I had never been to church. Unlike Allison, I never went to Sunday school, was never threatened with burning in hell, never had to use reason and courage to overcome these fears, but I grew up in America. And in America, atheists are the most hated minority. Really. Look it up. And after you look it up, start spreading rumors about the Quakers, because this really is not fair. We are somehow the most charitable and most hated group at the same time.

I had never heard the word
atheist
used by someone I knew. It just had such awful connotations to me that when she said the word, my heart stopped.

Even though I never really thought about hell, it still scared the shit out of me. (Funny how people believe in heaven because that part sounds really fun, but when it comes to hell and suffering, most of us are like, “Oh, that’s probably not true.”) I remember thinking:
Even if you are an atheist, just shut up and say you’re agnostic. Trick God with me. What does that guy know, anyway? He created Sarah Palin and Michael Bay. We all have our off days.

I tried to talk her out of it, and in doing so—for the first time in my life—I became devoutly religious. This was somebody I cared about, and yes, all evidence and reason say that there is no God, but I loved this girl and could not take the chance. Sorry, evidence and reason!

Evidence and Reason:
But Jamie, chances are there is no giant, red, muscular dude in a lake of fire, who chases people with his pitchfork. What are you, nine?

Jamie:
Shut up, Evidence.
You’re
nine!

Evidence and Reason:
C’mon man, that doesn’t even
make sense. We don’t have an age.

Jamie:
You’re nine
and
stupid.

Evidence and Reason:
We’ll be back once you’ve calmed down.

Previously, I never understood what “saving” people meant, but fearing for Allison’s eternal soul made me und
erstand how some evangelicals can really believe they are saving people from burning in hell for eternity. That explains their moxie.

I was turning into the people I mocked. I kept trying to convince Allison to say she believed in God. She didn’t even have to really believe it—just say it. I told her I didn’t want to be in heaven alone (I am twenty-seven years old, and those words came out of my mouth). Anytime she pointed out the crazy mistakes in the Bible, I told her God probably had nothing to do with the Bible. God laughs at people who read the Bible, but he loves us. That’s how she and I had found each other.

Jamie:
Just shut up and stop being so stubborn,
and pretend to believe in something, so you don’t have to burn forever.

Allison:
No.

I couldn’t understand why she didn’t see the romance in this. If you lined up all the facts, Allison and I should have never met. Clearly, it was God who’d put us together. She was being so ungrateful!

It happened like this.

The day before Allison started working at the bookstore, I was going to quit. I went into my manager’s office and bravely told him that I was leaving. Then he told me I couldn’t leave, and within seconds I caved because I am weak.

The next day Allison started working at the bookstore! Before Allison got the bookstore job, she was going to join the Peace Corps, but changed her mind at the last minute. Slam dunk. God did it.

I would only begin to understand much later that my thinking during this time was completely selfish. I was thinking about it like God was only looking out for Allison and me. In reality, if God were playing matchmaker, that means he just took a very qualified girl away from the Peace Corps . . . to work retail. Allison could have saved Somali children, but no, no, God wanted me to screw the new girl. That doesn’t seem right. I get laid, but those kids are pirates now.

But belief like that makes you feel special. It’s like God is watching you. We like to pretend we are our own mini
Truman Show
, forgetting that Truman wanted out. When people say, “It’s in God’s hands,” that just means they don’t want responsibility for what’s about to happen.

Allison refused to relent. I stopped trying to convert her. When the holidays rolled around, I took Allison to Niagara Falls because I needed to distract her from the fact that I was broke and couldn’t afford presents (thanks, retail). She already summed up that story better than I can, but I’ll add this: I stopped believing in God that day, but I started to believe in life and love.

I liked Christmas for all of the wrong reasons. Gifts and shiny lights will eventually get old or burn out, but love is something that stays with us until our last breath. I don’t need a man with a sled and beard to tell me that. I don’t need to think that God put Allison and me together like some perverted voyeur. There are more than 6 billion people on this planet, and if you find the one person you want to spend the rest of your life with—if you find someone you want to spend more than twenty minutes with—it’s a miracle. You did that—no one else. That, to me, is romance.