I'm an atheist. And I love Christmas.
Really, though, I love holidays. I love parties and celebrations and feasts and days off and getting together with family and traditions. So I love Christmas, but I also love Hanukkah, Solstice, Passover, Thanksgiving, New Years and the Fourth of July. I love singing Christmas carols, I really love some of the good old ones like Silent Night and Good King Wenceslas and Here we go a-wasailing (I also love wasail, yum) and Carol of the Bells, but I also sometimes just love singing Jingle Bells really loud. I love the Singing Christmas Tree. I love Christmas lights. I love seeing Denver all covered in snow and sparkling. I love the City and County building getting lit up and I love the Parade of Lights. When I was a kid, I loved getting up at 5am on Christmas morning and going downstairs to empty my stocking and watch cartoons and parades. I loved finding an orange at the bottom of my stocking. I love going swimming on Christmas.
I think that traditions are important and I appreciate the religious background to Christmas, I just don't happen to believe in Jesus as savior and son of God and all that. I like Jesus, I think he was a great guy and that we can learn a lot from him, so I don't mind celebrating his birthday. I also like to celebrate the birthdays of Martin Luther King Jr. and George Washington, cause they were pretty great guys too.
I don't get offended when people wish me a "Merry Christmas" as long as you don't get offended if I wish you a "Happy Holidays" because Christmas isn't the only holiday this time of year. Christmas is included in my "Happy Holidays," but since I don't celebrate Christmas for the religious aspect of it, it is equal in my mind with Hanukkah, Winter Solstice and New Years, which my family also celebrate with fun and tradition (I love lighting Hanukkah candles, and especially cleaning the wax off of the menorah, I don't know why, I just love playing with the wax).
This year for Christmas, my sister and her family cooked a holiday feast for us at their house- they invited their good friends and my aunt came down from Greeley. My mom (the only Christian among us) had to work until mid afternoon, but when she arrived we all sat down to a lovely meal of turkey and stuffing, with latkes from my aunt and pumpkin pie.
Happy birthday Jesus.
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2 comments:
And I love it that you love all that! I think that our traditions have made our life full and interesting! I wish that everyone would respect that and not get offended or wigged out because we happen to believe something different than they do. I am not trying to convert anyone to the way I was raised and please don't try to convert me but respect me!
Hi Becca,
I am interested in finding atheists and agnostics who are doing or did charity work for a blog piece I'm doing. I'm trying to find some non-religious people to balance the 4 Christian missionaries I've already contacted.
The piece would feature questions from readers of the blog for both religious and non-religious charity workers and contrast the two.
My blog is here: http://mysecretatheistblog.blogspot.com
You'll find my email in my profile there.
godlesspoutine@gmail.com
Thanks!
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