Posted by Hemant Mehta in A story on NPR’s Weekend Edition today talked about Humanists and the holidays. It features discussion on the question: What do we do when there’s a Christian monopoly on the holidays?
The story featured Harvard’s Humanist Chaplain Greg Epstein as well as members of the Harvard Secular Society.
[tags]atheist, atheism[/tags]
Every now and then, it’s nice to remember that Christmas has a long and zany history as a holiday. The History Channel recently aired an entertaining program on the subject.
It’s clear to me at least that lots of people have celebrated at this time of year for lots of reasons and in lots of ways. And the Christian “monopoly” waxes and wanes enough that I have no problem ignoring it and having a very secular, very merry Christmas.
This kind of got me in the Holiday mood.If you are from Europe you might be familiar with Krampas, Santa’s pet
monster who whips the kids who have been naughty . Well now he has his
own music video (notice the birch rods)
http://www.lesbarons.net/xmaswithkrampus/xmaswithkrampussong.html
We celebrate Dec 25th pretty much like Christians do. Put lights up outside so the house looks more cheerfull. Put up a tree with ornaments. Wake up in the morning. Run down stairs. Open presents.
Well actually we celebrated Christmas a day early this year because we were traveling and couldn’t fit everything in the car.
We just don’t beat ourselves up thinking about how we are “fallen” and then prop us back up with how Jesus “saved” us. Besides that, there is really not much difference between how we celebrate Christmas and how the believers we know celebrate Christmas.
We don’t celebrate Christmas in our house anymore. My older son likes Bodhi Day and I like Human Light day. Christmas carols? Handels Messiah for my older son and Carol of the Bells for me.
I don’t think Epstien has bad ideas. I think they are good ones, but they need some polishing. I think he is right though, it only seems like religion because religion is changing.
We celebrate Christmas in our house. But then, we celebrate solstice as well.
grazatt, I showed my boys the Krampus video and they’ve been singing it all day.
Allison did you get some whipping rods ready?
[...] bank holiday – the actual christmas celebration took place yesterday. Which brings me to the actual topic of this post, a topic which seems to be very popular among secularist bloggers this time of year: [...]