Here’s mine:

Try being an Atheist. Any time of year. Everyone cringes when you say it. They look at you with horror (even if they’re non-religious, or self-proclaimed Agnostics). They try to argue with you, by poking around in you for any hint of spiritual though, and then smugly tell you that you can’t be an Atheist if you believe in anything spiritual (not so). Sometimes they’re so astounded that they insist that you can’t have a moral system if you’re an Atheist. They insist that you can’t KNOW that there is no god, so you can’t really be an Atheist.

But if you look up Atheism, here’s what you’ll find in Wikipedia:

“Atheism, as an explicit position, can be either the affirmation of the nonexistence of gods,[1] or the rejection of theism.[2] It is also[3] defined more broadly as an absence of belief in deities, or nontheism.[4]”

So there it is, folks. I very implicitly do not believe in any deities, none whatsoever. I’m not saying that I know for a fact that there aren’t any (because I don’t), but I don’t believe in them. So despite whatever spiritual beliefs I do have (and I do have some vague but important ones), by definition, I am an Atheist.

I just had this conversation with a good friend the other night. His wife was saying that there was a woman complaining in her online forum that “it’s so hard to be a Christian…” because everyone attacks her beliefs. I laughed and said “ha, if she thinks being a Christian is hard, try being an Atheist. Everyone hates you if you’re an Atheist, and they try to argue with you to prove that you’re not…” Guess what he did? He tried to argue with me that I wasn’t an Atheist.

And then, I performed my first (and hopefully last) act as an Evangelical Atheist, and I converted him to Atheism. OK, I didn’t actually do anything except bring up the subject, which lead him to start reading on the subject, and by the end of the conversation, he proclaimed “Oh my god, I think I’m an Atheist too!”

Anyhow, back to Christmas. Needless to say, Derek, Jews aren’t the only ones who hate Christmas. Next year, try pulling the Atheism card. I bet you can have fun with that one, too!

XOXO and happy wintery season to you.

I miss you guys!

Dawn

Every year, around mid-September (depending on the year), I wish all my friends “Happy Holidays.” When they look at me funny, I say, “Well, there’s Rosh Hashanna (two days), Yom Kippur, then you sneeze and it’s Sukkot (eight days) and finally Simchat Torah, and …. oh, wait. You don’t celebrate those; I forgot. Well, you still have, uhm, Labor Day and Columbus Day, so at least your kids don’t feel left out.”

Santa Claus has nothing to do with the Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus. If someone does not celebrate this birth, then they are celebrating Santa with all the fun brilliant consumerism trimmings.

Just as with other religions, C-tianity has those who are nominal believers and those who adhere strictly to scriptural ways of living (which would include never having Santa paraphanalia in the home).

Technically it is just a pagan feast day (as you noted) such as Easter that the “Holy” Roman Empire changed and then forced upon people as “Christian”. Why does that bother you? It should bother Christians more!

I doubt you have ever read the new testament, but Christmas is never mentioned as a holiday/feast day. They do mention that Jesus celebrated Chanukah, though!

(my name links to a photo and there are closeups on each side)

I don’t know if they discussed the fact that not all of their readers celebrate Christmas or didn’t even think about it.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the lights, the music, and the general atmosphere of cheer.

I just found my role in the season exhausting — for every well-intentioned “Merry Xmas” tossed my way, I felt it my duty to smile and respond, “Happy Holidays.” I always hoped that my subtle reminder that not everyone celebrates the season in the same fashion wouldn’t fall on deaf ears. I suspect, however, that it did.

Derek: “Happy December.” :-)

Few things are as much of a tonic to the Jewish soul for the outsiderness of carols and trees and the insane commercialism of America in this season.