Christmas for Atheists

[Skeptical Greg]

*Easter is the strangest holiday to be claimed as a christian one because it still retaines it's pagan name which was after the fertility goddess Oestra.

Ooooo.. Can you say ' estrus ' ?


Can you imagine all the little old blue-haired ladies having strokes or choking on their communion wafers on Easter Sunday, if the preacher did a sermon about this...?

 

[scribble]

Even when I was an christian I always thought it dumb that one day is considered more holy while the next isn't.

According to the Holy Bible, some days are more sacred than others. That's just how it is. I don't know why God isn't consistent.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

According to the Holy Bible, some days are more sacred than others. That's just how it is. I don't know why God isn't consistent.

The only ones I know about are the ' Sabbath ' and maybe Passover.. Interesting how most Christians ignore those two completely..

 

[BlackBetta]

According to the Holy Bible, some days are more sacred than others. That's just how it is. I don't know why God isn't consistent.

Hmm...maybe more related to the mood of the humans channeling God's will?? Could be...

 

[Nyarlathotep]

Another thought on the difference between Christmas as a holiday and the pledge occured to me while I was getting my lunch.

If I were a Government employee and it really bothered me that I could not work on Christmas, I would be perfectly free to find another job that had days off that suited me.

If I were a school child and saying the pledge bothered me, I owuld not be free to find another school.

 

[evildave]

Easter/Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas

It's all tradition.

Do you want to be the one who's kids go to school and say "I didn't have a Christmas or Hanukka or anything. We just sat aroud and watched TV and had u-bake pizza."

Child abuse cases have been built from less.

Certainly there are alternative uses for holidays. For instance, instead of hanging around with the extended family listening to them gripe and politic about one another, you could ship out your packages and go on a trip to some warmer climate for Christmas, instead. Or go and visit snow if you live in a warmer climate. Snow is great to visit, if you don't have to live with it.

Travel is more an option if you have no kids, or older kids.

 

[tdn]

Actually, most cultures have celebrated some sort of mid-winter festival. I believe to alleviate the deprevations that come with winter and the boredom of being locked inside.

I think it has more to do with deprivations than boredom. You see, it works like this: When the ground is frozen, crops don't grow. You have to rely on stored foods from the last harvest to see you through the entire winter. Screw up, and it's not like you can just bop down to the local 7-Eleven for a loaf of bread. Screw up = death by starvation. And one way to screw up is to have too many mouths to feed. Therefore, all those farm animals not pulling their own weight get slaughtered. Which means meat. Lots and lots of meat. More than a family would see for the rest of the year. So there is a big feast, followed by a long period of uncertainty.

So the winter celebration has a real practical meaning, overlaid with a lot of emotional baggage.

 

[MLynn]

You know, we live in such a great country (flag wave) and we have such great freedoms. We can observe religious or cultural tradition or not. I know people who go to Las Vegas or Hawaii for Christmas because they don't want to go through all the commercialization cr*p, but want to have a good time. I can pass out candy at halloween and not get cr*p from other Xtians (I have had little debates, but they died out a long time ago). I have two Xtian friends who don't observe Christmas at all - no lights, no tree, zero.
I think our 1st Amendment is awesome!

 

[tdn]

Oh, and about Christmas as a US government holiday -- for a long time, it wasn't. It was considered too British, and most Americans at that time wanted nothing to do with British anything. In fact Congress met every 12/25 for something like 70 years. It was when Americans saw those nice English customs (as well as reading stories by Nash and Dickens) that they put pressure on the government to declare a holiday.

 

[Hagrok]

Also, who gets a whole week off at christmas? Other than school children who get two weeks of what is called Winter Break. If I take a week or so off at christmas, I use my vacation time which I can use any time during the year.

Oddly enough, both Sandia and I think Los Alamos national laboratories get an entire week off at the end of the year. It covers Christmas and New Years.

--Dan

 

[Quixote]

The only time I got a week off for a holiday was the Eid al Adha. I was fortunate enough to be detailed to the Riyadh Office in 1996. (Actually I was the Riyadh office in 1996, but that's another story.) The building was shutting down for the Eid, so I was forced (oh, the humanity!) to take a week off with pay. One of these days I really need to get around to giving someone a piece of my mind about my being forced to observe an Islamic holiday. Insh'allah.