The war on Christmas

[DavisModerator]

I guess we revisit this every year. Christmas is pretty uncontroversial among atheists in continental Europe. It is controversial amongst many in the United States. I don’t really know about Ireland or the UK. I enjoy Christmas lights, seeing “The Messiah” in concert, singing Christmas songs, looking at the public “Nativity Scene” and, of course, all of the secular things like presents, Christmas trees, watching the Grinch, Frosty the Snowman, seeing friends and having preposterously enormous Xmas meals. I know that it can be a pain in the ass for some American atheists who have to visit their religious family and become overdosed from the religiosity injected into the holidays by their family and people/public around them. What is Christmas like for you where you live? Does it bother you having the religious elements on public display (sometimes paid for by local government)? Do you enjoy the festivities with your family?

[DavisModerator]

Christmas lights in Madrid

• This reply was modified 4 years ago by  Davis.

[JadeBlackOliveParticipant]

We have the fireplace going, exchange gifts, have dinner, stick to ourselves, & leave the religious to the religious.

• This reply was modified 4 years ago by  JadeBlackOlive.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Every year my sister sends me a Christmas card. I display it over the fireplace and say to myself, “OK, that’s the Christmas decorating done for another year and thank god for that”. 🙂

 

[_Robert_Participant]

We usually darken the room with candlelight and watch A Christmas Carol, 1951 with Alastair Sim.

“I wear the chain I forged in life, I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.” LOL !

[PopeBeanieModerator]

Wouldn’t mind seeing baby Satan in a manger, in a city park for Christmas.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Davis and Fellow Unbelievers,

I work in retail, so Christmas is a time to shine and a time to dread.

The dreadful part is when Holy-Roller Christians pass churches on every corner on the way to the store, pass under store signs saying:”Merry Christmas,” pass traditional “ugly Christmas sweaters” that say: “Merry Christmas,” pass all-Christian book sections and Bill O’Reilly in non-fiction, pass Advent calendars and Christmas cards in stationery, pass creche/manger scenes in the All-Christmas section…then claim there is a “War On Christmas!”

They especially claim this if you accidentally say: “Happy Holidays” instead of: “Merry Christmas!” Never mind that there are dozens of Holidays between Novenber and January, from many religions, plus Atheist, Humanist, Secular Holidays, and even Holidays in Sci-Fi/Fantasy realms in books, movies, and video games:

List of Multinational Festivals ans Holidays
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_winter_festivals

Holy-Roller Christians don’t want freedom of conscience. They want a “Harumph!”:

“I didn’t get a Harumph!”–Blazing Saddles

• This reply was modified 4 years ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Linkie no workie
• This reply was modified 4 years ago by  TheEncogitationer.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Fellow Unbelievers,

Oh, and I think governments would do right if they just protected Life, Liberty, and Property and left celebrations to the individual choices of private citizens.  Baby Jesus shouldn’t need welfare.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Fellow Unbelievers,

On the good side, you can always make a donation at the Toys For Tots box or the Salvation Army kettle with a mini Post-It note that says: “You don’t have to believe to give and help,” complete with the circled “A” that you can make in one stroke without lifting the pen.  It lets the believers know that they don’t have 100 percent market share on ideas and that Atheists aren’t baby-eating monsters. 😁

[Belle RoseParticipant]

This year Christmas for us will be devoted to helping others.

We will do “gifts” on Dia de los Reyes” (and take advantage of ALL the “after Christmas” sales) 😉

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

A Christian friend jokingly got me a hideous Xmas sweater as a present just to wind me up. I wore it for an hour when I called over to her house for dinner. Her parents happened to be there and were not amused by it. Not with the sweater but with the fact that I would have had to have walked by the Church with it on display…..on Easter Sunday :-). Oh sorry, its just that I love it so much! If looks could kill…lol.

[_Robert_Participant]

Besides the huge commercial windfall, Xmas was always basically womenfolk building up huge expectations and menfolk getting hammered and fucking it all up. Oh and complete christian assholes trying their hardest to be tolerable for a few days.

[DavisModerator]

Yeah in fact I’ve seen quite a few American films where some drunken uncle ruins Christmas for everybody. Is it an actual thing?

[_Robert_Participant]

Davis wrote:

Yeah in fact I’ve seen quite a few American films where some drunken uncle ruins Christmas for everybody. Is it an actual thing?

Modus operandi for my family and the same for most of my friends. I recall a fully decorated xmas tree being thrown out into the yard one year.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

 

Davis and Robert,

This phenomenon of drunk/druggie relatives sadly does exist and it does crop up the worst during the Holidays.   My sympathies go out to all who’ve ever had to deal with them.

Just about as bad are misery-makers who are stone-cold, down-to-the-bone sober who terrify impressionable kids with thoughts of eternal damnation during the Holidays.

I faced one such tormenter when I was about age 9.  It was a Sunday School Teacher.

She was citing a list of things from Scripture, I believe it was a list of gifts someone gave to someone else.  When sbe finished, like silly kids are known to do, I interjected in song: “…And a Partridge in a Pear Tree!”

Everyone in the class laughed except the Teacher, who had us all turn in our Bibles to Revelation 22:18-19, which she pointedly cited to me:

22:18 For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:
22:19 And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

Those words struck terror into this little boy’s heart for a long while!

Although I now know that all Christian sects “add unto” the Scriptures and “take out” from the Scriptures all the damn time, although I now laugh at the idea of not being assimilated in that Borg Cube called “The New Jerusalem,” I do not forget that moment to this very day.

Thinking back on it, it kind of pisses me off thinking about someone using the bogus threat of eternal damnation on a little kid over some trifle of levity!

But I also feel vindicated that I outgrew that Supernatural way of thinking.

I feel glad that I know the truth about the Supernatural and as Thomas Paine observed about knowing truth, one can never un-know it.

And I feel like a better person knowing I would never inflict such a pain on any vulnerable innocent person as happened to me.

Here endeth the lesson on Holiday Horrors.  It’s gets better once you think your way out of it.

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