One early morning, a couple of weeks ago, a co-worker and I fluttered joyously around the workplace with shining eyes and rosy cheeks, adorning every bare wall with coloured tinsel, painted Christmas balls and cut-out cardboard reindeers. Smacking on excessive blobs of blue-tack, we hurried excitedly from wall to wall and up and down ladders like busy elves on huge amounts of caffeine. When our other co-worker stumbled in, drowsy-eyed, foam coffee cup in hand, we stopped suddenly, vibrantly, waiting for his reaction like two children holding up an incompetent but elaborate drawing to a grown-up and shuffling eagerly, waiting to be showered in cheerful praise and choruses of matched enthusiasm. He raised an eyebrow quizzically, and muttered in a low voice, “Uh, aren’t you an atheist?”
Despite being able to clearly recall impassioned debates at dinner parties leading to condescending diagrams scribbled onto the back of napkins (“and see here at the beginning is where the BANG! happened…”) enraged foretelling of hellfire, pitchforks and suspended access to so-and-so’s aunt’s beach house over the long weekend, the notion that I, as an atheist, should reconsider participating in the festivities of Christmas had never properly occurred to me. The origins of the festival require no explanation; the roots are embedded in the very name, and my unimpressed co-worker seemed to have asked a sensible and valid question. Should atheists be celebrating Christmas and if so how?
Some folks in New Jersey have voiced their opinion. Earlier this month, a billboard commissioned by a group called the American Atheists was unveiled depicting a traditional nativity scene, blared over with the message: You KNOW it’s a Myth… This Season Celebrate REASON’. While it does sound rather grinch-like (not to mention drenched in that smug delusion of superiority we atheists tend to favour), the group claims not to encourage non-believers to reject the annual festival altogether, but to embrace it as a secular celebration rather than a Christian one. With our rich cultural assortment back home, this attitude certainly has its place. From reverent hymns at the local church service to drunken anthems at the neighbour’s barbeque, and not to mention an array of non-Christian faiths that celebrate their own religious festivals, Christmas, despite its roots, appears to be something embraced and enjoyed by most. The origins almost seem secondary and on a general level they are, with Santa Claus presiding over suburban front lawns instead of baby Jesus dolls, “Merry Christmas!” often switched with the broader, “Happy Holidays”, and ‘O Holy Night’ replaced by the secular alternative, ‘Jingle Bell Rock’, blasting merrily through shopping centre speakers.
Another area of debate is the issue of children and Santa Claus, a figure commonly used by atheists to provide condescending comparisons and to supplement smug diagrams of the Big Bang theory, along with figures like the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. Despite how frequently Richard Dawkins, prominent atheist and author of The God Delusion, insists that the Santa Claus myth is by comparison innocent enough, a practice in which even he might indulge, there is increasing hostility. Whether it’s too deeply rooted from Christian tradition, too commercialised, too similar to Jesus and the Christian God (dispensing rewards and punishments for behaviour and enforcing a pre-defined code of conduct with an improbable, faith-based existence), too encouraging of extrinsic motivation and material gain or too damaging to the trust of the child toward the lying, scheming parent (yes, that is one of the arguments), the Santa Claus myth is another headache for us atheists to worry about. On the other side of field, denying the existence of Santa Claus to young children is still perceived to be almost blasphemous,; a few years back the Russian government had banned a television advertisement for denying the existence of the jolly Father Christmas. The Santa Claus myth is something still hushed amongst us grown ups in the presence of children and talked about cautiously in code.
All in all, despite those few Christians who will fitfully defend their festival, rigorously guarding it from those Godless hypocrites who barge in and proceed to cherry-pick right out of scripture, and who go ape-crazy with the light-up nativity scenes, when it comes to this time of the year, as demonstrated by the recent stunt pulled by the American Atheists and the growing hysteria concerning the wicked myth of Santa Claus that plagues the rationality and parental trust of vulnerable young children, it seems to be the non-believers who come out on top for displaying the most bizarre behaviour during silly season. Nevertheless, whether it’s about faith, family, charity or mass consumerism, the end of the year is certainly a time to be savoured and enjoyed and you can do it in any which way you choose.
