Pagans, Atheists and alternative thinkers...How do you explain Christmas to your children?

Question

I have my own version, but I'd like to hear others. Thank you. Have a Happy Winter Solistice. Peace.

Answer 1

I just heard Larry the Cable Guy's Story of the Baby Bajesus as told by his drunken Grandpa. I think it's going to become my new X-mas story for the next generation!

Answer 2

We celebrate a lot of stuff here: Chanukah, Yule, Christmas - and then we have a New Year's Party. My kids are 3 & 6 and we start decorating for christmas on Thanksgiving weekend - and we do a ton of crafts for all the holidays and on line computer games. I am steering my kids toward Santa Claus - I want them to learn that he is the embodiment of the Spirit of Love and Giving (like so many important religious figures) and it is that spirit that comes down our chimneys each year and fills our homes and hearts with love and warmth.

I like Santa because he knows no dividers - "Santa Claus knows we are all God's Children, that makes everything right" - so he is a strong voice for unity and tolerance, in my opinion. That is the way of the future, it seems to me. Without respect, unity and tolerance, all is lost.

Wishing you the very best of the holiday season and throughout 2007!

Peace!

Answer 3

I tell them it's the time of celebration for many different people. Some are celebrating the winter solstice, some are celebrating the birth of Jesus, and some are celebrating peace on Earth, good will towards men. In any case, Santa has no bias and visits ALL!

Answer 4

" whilst babies asking questions bearing directly to background of Christmas and why religious human beings rejoice it in recent times - what ought to I tell them?" tell them that Christmas originated by using fact the pagan social gathering of the iciness solstice, hundreds of years in the past (besides the very undeniable fact that it wasn't *called* "Christmas" at that element in time). particularly decrease than 2 thousand years in the past, Christians coopted it for use by using fact the social gathering of Jesus Christ's delivery (that he wasn't certainly born in December is inconsequential), and it remained that way for fairly some centuries. over the final hundred or so years, Christmas has as quickly as lower back been coopted, different than this time *from* Christians, by using secular society, to alter right into a occasion of relatives, togetherness, stable will, generosity, and all that stable stuff. Christmas is in the present day, and has been for longer than all people right here has been alive, a mundane holiday, one that all people, of any faith or lack thereof, is unfastened and welcome to rejoice.

Answer 5

We celebrate a secular Christmas with my parents and sibs and their families, and then we celebrate Yule within our own family and also with friends. My son is agnostic so he doesn't feel strongly either way, but he knows what the Christian Christmas is all about.
There is no harm in teaching about alternate beliefs, in my opinion.

Answer 6

I don't have any, though if I did they'd grow up like I did in knowing how our family celebrates it as a family focused holiday and Santa. But also aware that other people celebrate it a bit differently and a different focus.

Answer 7

I don't have kids, but I'd like to think that I'd do it by explaining that people have different ways of celebrating the holidays that are important to their religions or cultures. Same as explaining Hannukah or Ramadan or any other holiday that my religion didn't celebrate.

Answer 8

I'm an atheist but I told my daughter the story of Christmas and all the rest.

This is a decision I made as an adult and I'm allowing her to do the same.

She knows I don't believe in God.....but at this point in her life she does....and that's OK with both of us.

Answer 9

I made this great video about Winter celebrations.

Answer 10

You might explain that many, many people during the last almost two thousand years decided they should celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ instead of the birth of the sun god.