A lot of people celebrate Christmas who aren't active in any church or religion, sometimes to be with family/friends, sometimes to satisfy family/friends, sometimes for the comfort that time of year can bring people, sometimes just for presents...
So, if one who doesn't actively go to church or participate in religion can celebrate Christmas for reasons other than biblical, I thought to myself, then do some atheists too?
Afterall, people are just people.
(I am a very open minded person - answer freely.)
2007-09-21 09:29:42 · 36 answers · asked by shellj_foxy 3 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
To the person hiding in my Christmas tree... well, that's just creepy.
2007-09-21 09:34:52 · update #1
I'm a pagan Taoist atheist, so yes, I celebrate Yule.
Many people also celebrate family and community.
The celebrations around the Solstice were extremely popular and widely-celebrated long before the birth of Christ. In fact, for the first few centuries, Christians tried very hard to get people to cease these celebrations, to no avail. Eventually they realized it wouldn't work, and decided since they couldn't beat them, they'd join them.
But I think this is okay, because the point of the celebrations is to take the darkest, coldest, hardest, dreariest time of year, and celebrate light, life, hope, joy, giving, caring, and togetherness.
These things are universal human concepts that don’t belong to any one religion. Or even to just religion.
2007-09-21 09:38:46 · answer #1 · answered by KC 7 · 3⤊ 0⤋
I do. Not for a Christian reason though. I enjoy being around my Family. Before there was a Christian Church, these same Holidays were being celebrated... just in a much more Pagan way. If you take 30 minutes or so and look into the Subject you will see that these Holidays were stolen and renamed. A lot of it came from when Rome became the HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. Read up on Constantine.
2007-09-21 09:39:30 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
I love the Pagan Holidays. The real meaning of Christmas is not religious.
Many Pagan cultures used to cut boughs of evergreen trees in December, move them into the home or temple, and decorate them. Modern-day Pagans still do. This was to recognize the winter solstice -- the time of the year that had the shortest daylight hours, and longest night of the year. This occurs annually sometime between Dec-20 to 23. They noticed that the days were gradually getting shorter; many feared that the sun would eventually disappear forever, and everyone would freeze. But, even though deciduous trees, bushes, and crops died or hibernated for the winter, the evergreen trees remained green. They seemed to have magical powers that enabled them to withstand the rigors of winter.
2007-09-21 09:37:06 · answer #3 · answered by Justsyd 7 · 6⤊ 0⤋
What, that commercial exploitation of a Christian overlay on a pagan midwinter festival?
Not really.
I don't have enough family (and none in the same country as me) to steer a happy "family Christmas " between all the various pressures and exhortation to conform to one custom or another. Not least the percived pressure to "look jolly" lest you "spoil it" for others. Happiness as tyranny.
Christmas time is here by golly,
disapproval would be folly.
Deck the malls with hunks oif holly
Brother, here we go again!
(Tom Lehrer)
2007-09-21 09:39:41 · answer #4 · answered by Pedestal 42 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Yeah, as a Puerto-Rican it's tradition here (its a catholic majority since it's discovery), although I don't celebrate the birth of Jesus.
Here we have the "Noche Buena" on the 24 at night where at 12 o'clock kids get to open their gifts (adults too), the morning after it's Sandy Claws so kids again get gifts, besides the whole seen family from afar.
2007-09-21 09:38:24 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Why do you get a tree? Are you Christian?
The original Yule was to celebrate the return of the sun. Give people company during the cold months and make sure everyone had a good meal.
2007-09-21 09:39:33 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 3⤊ 0⤋
Not even religious people of this faith celebrate Christmas, correctly. They attend church then that's it, big deal!
The point of Christmas is to "give." It's a lesson in all religions. However, "give" now means "consume" and "consumerism" and "towards your own children." I think the whole point is to give to the world, to help out, to serve food, volunteer, etc.
Now, it's about greed, spending money, giving (because it's expected, not because you want to), and consumption of large, piggish amounts of food. Think of a King, 800 years ago, eating his Turkey and Pig and mounds of food while everyone outside his gates starved. Think of yourself as the King and the peasents as Africans.
Christmas is about greed and Gluttony and foolish pride. Envy usually pops in for the kids when their friends get better stuff.
2007-09-21 09:39:15 · answer #7 · answered by Corvus 5 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Well its mainly a pagan holiday isn't it? So why the hell not?
I suspect most people who celebrate Christmas aren't Christian - what would you suggest we do - volunteer not to have any Christmas leave because we're atheists? Yeah right...
2007-09-21 09:39:06 · answer #8 · answered by Leviathan 6 · 3⤊ 0⤋
properly I reckon that's because of the fact the middle message of Christmas can attraction to even the main hardened heart. The message of peace in the international and stable will to all, the desire and delight all of us sense on the start of a toddler, the promise of latest existence, desire. All great things this great Christian competition represents. regrettably, the toughest hearts rebellion against it ensuing in the variety of vitriolic bile in the dissimilar solutions on your question. Even the fewer nasty atheists, in maximum circumstances, have a real subject admitting that something stable ought to pop out of Christianity - yet they nonetheless prefer the stable thoughts that cone with Christmas. for this reason they leap on the neo-pagan band wagon and declare it become stolen from pagans (it wasn't) or that it has now become a in basic terms secular competition (it hasn't). without putting onto a style of lies, they may well be left with a contradiction - or ought to offer up Christmas. (playstation Anglo-Saxon? supply me a wreck. Christmas started out 3 hundred or extra years earlier Anglo-Saxons have been in the physique. yuletide? Scandinavian - even added out. Romans? a great style of calendars around from earlier Christmas started out - no competition on Dec twenty 5th in any of them. Ditto everywhere else)
2016-11-06 01:44:41 · answer #9 · answered by caton 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Yes, I enjoy giving my friends and family stuff, but I also celebrate 4th of July and I'm British, and I love Bike week even though I am not a biker.
2007-09-21 09:46:31 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋