The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas (15 page)
Read The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas Online
Authors: Robin Harvie
J
ULIAN
B
AGGINI
Dear All,
It’s been a year of transformation and rejuvenation for the Goodhead family! Everyone—well, nearly everyone—is so looking forward to a Christmas that promises to put the icing on the top of our cake of annual achievement!
It all started last Christmas, to be precise, at around three-thirty on December 25, when I brought out the flame-licked pudding.
“Who’s for a bit of Crimbo pud?” I asked, not expecting the answer I got from our eldest, Toby.
“I don’t think I can take any more of this,” he sighed, draining his large glass of brandy. The room fell silent. “I mean, none of us even likes Christmas pudding, and even if we did, we’re all too stuffed for it anyway.”
For a short moment we all took on the appearance of startled squirrels. We had all thought his was an existential shriek, a declaration that our imperial Santa had no clothes. But perhaps all he could take no more of was lunch. We felt the embarrassment of people who had just agreed that S&M was indeed great, only to realize that the topic of conversation was in fact M&S.
Sensing our uncertainty, Toby spelled out what he had meant. “Think about it. We pretend we’re a family of rational freethinkers, with no time for supernatural nonsense and pointless social conventions. Yet look at us. Once again, we’ve wasted money on pointless presents nobody really wants. I mean, Dad, surely you didn’t think I’d read
Is It Just Me, or Is Every Book a Rip-Off of Something Else?
Why didn’t you give it straight to Oxfam and cut out the middleman?”
Gerald was indignant. “Talk about the kettle calling the pot black!” he said, a mix-up so typical no one bothered to correct him. “What about the book you bought me?”
“Excuse me, but just because it’s piled up next to all the unfunny, rip-off stocking fillers, that doesn’t mean
The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas
is one of them. Anyway, it’s not just the crap presents. I can’t believ
e how much rubbish you’ve bought from the supermarket. Under what conceivable circumstances would any half-civilized human with a palate that has not been destroyed by substance abuse choose to bake frozen mushroom vol-au-vents or open a jar of apricots in brandy syrup?”
“They are organic,” I said, as though it made a difference.
“What annoys me the most,” continued Toby, warming to his theme, “is that once again you’ve bought a jar of piccalilli. I don’t even know what piccalilli is. Do you?”
The room was silent.
“I agree with Toby,” said Clara. “But let’s face it, the excess is nothing compared to the hypocrisy. Why do we bother pretending that we’re one big harmonious and happy family, spending a day of love and laughter together? You two,” she said, wagging her finger dismissively at me and Gerald, “pretend for the sake of us three, as though we were still kids, and we pretend for the sake of you, as though you were old and senile.”
“For Christ’s sake,” interjected Joshua. “It’s bad enough you can’t stand Dad—you don’t have to rub his nose in it.”
“You can’t stand me?” asked Gerald, sounding more baffled than hurt.
“It’s not you,” said Clara. “It’s both of you. And don’t look so pathetically crushed. It’s you who always told us the importance of speaking the truth when we were growing up. If you don’t like the cake, don’t give out the recipe.”
“If you’re so keen on a familial truth and reconciliation council,” said Joshua, “how exactly do you intend to put it into practice?”
That, in short, is the question we have been trying to answer ever since. And twelve months later, I think we have reached our verdict. The simple principle we have tried to follow is to do nothing that defies or obscures the truth. As rationalist atheists, we have always had this as our official policy. But Toby’s brave candor made us realize that we had not in fact been living by it.
Obviously, this means that, as usual, we will be singing no carols and going to no church services. But this year we’re going much further. Toby and Clara have honestly admitted that they don’t actually like us very much and that they’d rather please themselves this year. We applauded their commitment to truth and honesty and gave them our blessing. So Clara will spend Baby Jesus Day (as Gerald always calls it) by herself in her flat in Bermondsey, as though it were a day like any other. She told us she thought it would be liberating, like much of the crying she has been doing recently
. We don’t know what Toby will do, as he decided that since he wasn’t pretending to like us anymore, he felt no obligation to keep us up to date with his movements.
Joshua offered to join us, but we turned him down, as we didn’t want him to do it just because he felt sorry for us. Charity is for strangers, not your own parents. So he’s going to volunteer at a soup kitchen. “Maybe the people there will appreciate what Christmas is really about,” he said. Sometimes his humor is so deadpan!
If I’m honest, I expect it will feel a little odd not to have any presents to open or give on Christmas morning, and not to see the kids. But we won’t be complete misery-guts! We’ve ordered some organic free-range duck breasts (hardly worth buying a whole bird for just the two of us) and will open a decent bottle of wine. And it will be nice not to have to spend the whole day cooking and washing up. It’s not often Gerald and I get to spend a free day together with just ourselves to please, and I’m sure we’ll remember how to do it when the time comes.
Everyone seems happy with this arrangement, except Joshua. He seems excessively attached to the irrationalities of culture and tradition. “The rituals of the calendar provide some variations of color to the passage of time,” he says—rather pretentiously, we think, as though that made it all right. He says that social rituals work precisely because we do not just choose to do what we think is best, but go along with whatever is usually done. They lose their meaning when we adapt them to suit our own beliefs about what is right and rational. “That’s the kind of logic that leads t
o Latin mass and belief in transubstantiation,” Gerald told him. When Joshua protested that it had led him to no such thing, Gerald simply said, “Well, I don’t expect you to be consistent in your irrationality.”
So that’s our big news. Life in the Goodhead family is more honest, open, and truthful, and that has to be a good thing. That means we have also rationalized our round-robin mailing list, of course, removing all the people we never see and don’t miss, as well as those we don’t much like. So, Tom and Barbara, if you are passing by over the holiday period, do drop by. Please.
P
AUL
K
RASSNER
It was God who instructed Bill O’Reilly to consider every utterance of “happy holidays” to be a verbalization of “the war on Christmas.” Whenever anybody claims that God talks directly to them, I think they’re totally delusional. George Bush is no exception. Not only was he told by his senior advisor, Karen Hughes, not to refer to terrorists as “folks,” but Bush was also being prompted by God Him-Her-or-Itself: “God would tell me, ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq.’ And I did.” As if he were merely following divine orders.
In July 2003, during a meeting with Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas, Bush told the newly elected leader, “God told me to strike at Al-Qaeda and I struck them, and then He instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did. And now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me, I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them.”
Abu Bakar Bashir, an Islamic cleric and accused terrorist leader, has said that “America’s aim in attacking Iraq is to attack Islam, so it is justified for Muslims to target America to defend themselves.” That’s exactly interchangeable with this description of Bush by an unidentified family member, quoted in the
Los Angeles Times
: “George sees [the war on terror] as a religious war. His view is that they are trying to kill the Christians. And the Christians will strike back with more force and more ferocity than they will ever know.”
Indeed, General William Boykin, deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, said that “George Bush was not elected by a majority of the voters in the United States, he was appointed by God.” Discussing the battle against a Muslim warlord in Somalia, Boykin explained, “I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.”
Apparently, religious bigotry runs in the family. Bush’s father, the former president: “I don’t know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.” And before him, there was Ronald Reagan: “For the first time ever, everything is in place for the Battle of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ.” Not to mention Reagan’s secretary o
f the interior, James Watt, responsible for national policy on the environment: “We don’t have to protect the environment—the Second Coming is at hand.”
In 1966, Lyndon Johnson told the Austrian ambassador that the deity “comes and speaks to me about two o’clock in the morning when I have to give the word to the boys, and I get the word from God whether to bomb or not.” So maybe there’s some kind of theological tradition going on in the White House.
But if these leaders are
not
delusional, then they’re deceptive. And in order to deceive others, one must first deceive oneself until self-deception morphs into virtual reality. In any case, we have
our
religious fanatics, and they have
theirs
. In September 2007, on the eve of the sixth anniversary of 9/11, Osama bin Laden warned the American people that they should reject their capitalist way of life and embrace Islam to end the Iraq war, or else his followers would “escalate the killing and fighting against you.”
Bush once proclaimed, “God is not neutral,” which is the antithesis of my own spiritual path, my own peculiar relationship with the universe, based on the notion that God is
totally
neutral—though I’ve learned that whatever people believe in works for them.
My own belief in a deity disappeared when I was thirteen. I was working early mornings in a candy store in our apartment building. My job was to insert different sections of the newspaper into the main section. On the day after the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, I read that headline over and over and over again while I was working. That afternoon, I told God I couldn’t believe in him anymore because—even though he was supposed to be a loving and all-powerful being—he had allowed such devastation to happen. And then I heard the voice of God:
“Allowed? Why do you think I gave humans free will?”
“Okay, well, I’m exercising my free will to believe that you don’t exist.”
“All right, pal, it’s your loss!”
At least we would remain on speaking terms. But I knew it was a game. I enjoyed the paradox of developing a dialogue with a being whose reality now ranked with that of Santa Claus. Our previous relationship had instilled in me a touchstone of objectivity that could still serve to help keep me honest. I realized, though, that whenever I prayed, I was only talking to myself.
The only thing I can remember from my entire college education is a definition of philosophy as “the rationalization of life.” For my term paper, I decided to write a dialogue between Plato and an atheist. On a whim, I looked up atheism in the Manhattan phone b
ook, and there it was: “Atheism, American Association for the Advancement of.” I went to their office for background material.
The AAAA sponsored the Ism Forum, where anybody could speak about any ism of their choice. I invited a few acquaintances to meet me there. The event was held in a dingy hotel ballroom. There was a small platform with a podium at one end of the room and heavy wooden folding chairs lined around the perimeter. My favorite speaker declared the Eleventh Commandment: “Thou shalt not take thyself too goddamned seriously.” Taking that as my unspoken theme, I got up and parodied the previous speakers. The folks there were mostly middle-aged and elderly. They seemed to relish the notion of fresh youn
g blood in their movement.
However, my companions weren’t interested in staying. If I had left with them that evening in 1953, the rest of my life could have taken a totally different path. Instead, I went along with a group to a nearby cafeteria, where I learned about the New York Rationalist Society. A whole new world of disbelief was opening up to me. That Saturday night I went to their meeting. The emcee was a former circus performer who entertained his fellow rationalists by putting four golf balls into his mouth. He also recommended an anti-censorship paper, the
Independent
.
The next week, I went to their office to subscribe and get back issues. I ended up with a part-time job, stuffing envelopes for a dollar an hour. My apprenticeship had begun. The editor, Lyle Stuart, was the most dynamic individual I’d ever met. His integrity was such that if he possessed information that he had a vested interest in keeping quiet—say, corruption involving a corporation in which he owned stock—it would become top priority for him to publish. Lyle became my media mentor, my unrelenting guru, and my closest friend. He was responsible for the launch of my irreverent magazine, the
Realist
. The masthead announced, “Freethought Criticism and Satire.”
In the words of the late Jerry Falwell—who once said that God is pro-war—“If you’re not a born-again Christian, you’re a failure as a human being.” We salute, then, a few
successful
human beings:
• The individual who placed the winning bid of $1,800 on eBay for a slab of concrete with a smudge of driveway sealant resembling the face of Jesus.
• The man who tried to crucify himself after seeing “pictures of God on the computer.” He took two pieces of wood, nailed them together in the form of a cross, and placed it on his living-room floor. He proceeded to hammer one of his ha
nds to the crucifix, using a fourteen-penny nail. According to a county sheriff spokesperson, “When he realized that he was unable to nail his other hand to the board, he called 911.” It was unclear whether he was seeking assistance for his injury or help in nailing his other hand down.
• The Sunday school teacher who advised one of his students to write on his penis, “What would Jesus do?” Presumably, “masturbate” was not considered to be the correct answer.
• And, of course, the anonymous authors of the following quotes from various state constitutions.
Arkansas:
“No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office.”
Mississippi:
“No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office in this state.”
North Carolina:
“The following persons shall be disqualified for office: First, any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God.”
South Carolina:
“No person shall be eligible to the office of Governor who denies the existence of the Supreme Being.”
Tennessee:
“No person who denies the being of God, or a future stat
e of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this state.”
Texas:
“Nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being.”
Rick Warren, pastor of America’s fourth-largest church, told his congregation, “I could not vote for an atheist because an atheist says, ‘I don’t need God.’ ”
In 2006, the Secular Coalition of America offered a $1,000 prize to anyone who identified the highest-ranking non-theist public official in the country. Almost sixty members of Congress were nominated, out of which twenty-two confided that they didn’t believe in a Supreme Being but wanted their disbelief kept secret. Only Pete Stark admitted that he was a non-believer, and in 2007 he became the first member of Congress ever to identify himself publicly as a non-believer.
In the week following that announcement, he received over 5,000 e-mails from around the globe, almost all congratulating him for his courage. “Like our nation’s founders,” he stated, “I strongly support the separation of church and state. I look forward to working with the Secular Coalition to stop the promotion of narrow religious beliefs in science, marriage contracts, the military, and the provision of social services.” In 2008, he was elected to his nineteenth term with 76.5 percent of the votes.
In the 2008 primaries, three presidential wannabes raised their hands during a Republican “debate” to signify that they didn’t believe
in evolution, although one of them, Mike Huckabee, admitted, “I don’t know if the world was created in six days, I wasn’t there.” He has also said, “If there was ever an occasion for someone to have argued against the death penalty, I think Jesus could have done so on the cross and said, ‘This is an unjust punishment and I deserve clemency.’ ”
It was a pleasant surprise when Barack Obama acknowledged “non-believers” in his inauguration speech. However, I don’t exempt my fellow atheists from criticism. I view as foolish those believers and skeptics alike who are waging a battle against the teaching of meditation in publicly funded schools, as though slow, deep breathing is necessarily and automatically a religious practice. What’s next, forbidding the teaching of empathy because that’s what Christians and Jews are supposed to practice?
Similarly, I ridicule China’s atheist leaders for banning Tibet’s living Buddhas from reincarnation without permission. According to the order, issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, “The so-called reincarnated living Buddha without government approval is illegal and invalid.” The regulation is aimed at limiting the influence of the Dalai Lama, even though China officially
denies
the possibility of reincarnation. (I used to believe in reincarnation, but that was in a previous lifetime.)
China is a Big Brother, slave-labor-driven, human-rights-violating, Maoist dictatorship, from which the United States borrows trillions, then proceeds to purchase “Made in China” American flags, poisoned food, and lead-painted Christmas toys. America remains a living paradox, where our citizens are force-fed deceit and misinformation so that we can continue to fund inhumane and illegal activities—even though the revolution was fought because of taxation without representation—yet I live in a country where at least I still have complete freedom to openly condemn the government, the
corporations, and organized religions that continue enabling each other to reek with corruption and inhumanity. I’m truly grateful.
“Thank you, God.”
“Shut up, you superstitious fool!”