Wesley’s Personal Blog

For those of you who don’t know (And I suppose there must be some), I am an atheist. Maybe some day I’ll explain why I don’t like the term ‘atheist’ but for now, it’s as good a term as any and it’s essentially true. There are a lot of things I don’t believe in¹, and any sort of “god”² is one of them.

In particular, I don’t believe in the Christian God and I don’t believe that Jesus Christ was born on December 25th to a virgin. And I assuredly don’t believe that the poor man getting nailed to a pole in any way helps anybody else find salvation after death.

However, I celebrate Christmas. This may seem ironic, or at least dichomatic, and many would even say it’s hypocritical. When it all comes down to it, I agree with you. Christmas is not my holiday. It’s not designed for me. So why celebrate it? I have several reasons:

First, all the other holidays are just as bad. For the same reasons I shouldn’t be celebrating Christmas, I also cannot celebrate Hanukkah³ or Ramadan⁴ or Kwanzaa⁵ or Festivus⁶ or the solstice⁷ or… you get the idea. However, that just hides the real question of “Why celebrate anything?”

So that brings point 2: I get time off work. I don’t have to take those days off DURING Christmas (And I don’t) but I do get the days off. It’s weird to get automatic days off without a holiday to go along with them. Yes, it’s a lame reason but it’s only one of several.

Thirdly, it is an official holiday in America. It’s on the list. I’m a citizen of the country. This gives me a bit of a right to celebrate it, I think.

Fourth, I’m a very happy person, generally. There are very few days that I’m not happy, and Christmas time is no exception. However, if you don’t celebrate Christmas (or one of the above holidays) you are seen as a Scrooge⁸ or a Grinch⁹ or a generally sour person. I just can’t carry that off.

Fifth, I’m lazy. If someone says “Merry Christmas” I seem to have 2 choices: I can spend 5 minutes telling a complete stranger (who couldn’t care less) that I am actually not a Christian and therefore don’t celebrate Christmas, looking like a Scrooge in the process; or I can smile and say “Merry Christmas to you too!” and look like the nice, friendly person I am. I choose the latter.

Sixth, I like Christmas music. I like Silent Night (Especially Mannheim Steamroller’s version) and O Holy Night gives me shivers. Just because I don’t think it actually means anything, should I not listen to it? I don’t believe you can turn someone into a toad using a stick and some fake Latin. Does that mean I can’t enjoy Harry Potter?

So that’s pretty much it. Every year I think about dropping the holiday. I think about answering “Have a merry Christmas” with “Thanks, but no. You have one for me,” but it never, ever seems worth it.

So Merry Christmas, everybody.

1. That’s the “a” part of athiest, by the way [↩]
2. That’s the “theist” part [↩]
3. Though I can believe that one. Maybe they just measured wrong [↩]
4. It jumps around too much, for one thing [↩]
5. Sorry, but it’s just fake Christmas [↩]
6. I could get behind this one but I’m not into wrestling or telling people they suck [↩]
7. The original reason for this holiday, and based on astronomy to boot. However, the new age wackos took ownership of this one thousands of years ago and it’s never been the same since [↩]
8. Even though at the end of the movie he reformed, so being a “Scrooge” should be considered good [↩]
9. See what I said about Scrooge [↩]

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