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Wed 10 Dec, 2008 02:41 pm
I had a brief talk at work today about Christmas and its meaning, about how it is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. I thought why do we, as atheists, celebrate Christmas? I know it is not a new question, but I just do not see the point, yet so many people who do not believe in Jesus Christ still put up decorations and buy presents for each other. Christmas just seems to be a formality now more than anything else, and people just put up decorations, give and receive presents and eat turkey automatically, in the same fashion as they would wake up in the morning, brush their teeth, eat breakfast and go to work.
Maybe I might be accused of being a scrooge, but the original purpose of Christmas is not what I believe in anymore, as a matter of fact I never have done.
Why do we still do these things, when we have forgotten or rejected the reasons for doing these things in the first place?
@existential potential,
I
am celebrating the "original purpose" of Christmas, which was roughly, "It's ******* dark and it's ******* cold and it's bumming me out, man. Let's light a bunch of lights and warm the place up and find the stuff that's still green and bring it inside and make a bunch of food and par-tay!"
@sozobe,
We need to give secular Christmas a proper purpose.
What's the point of questioning Christmas every year just so we can wax poetical about how we really get it and everyone else is just so bourgeois?
@sozobe,
Quote:I am celebrating the "original purpose" of Christmas, which was roughly, "It's ******* dark and it's ******* cold and it's bumming me out, man. Let's light a bunch of lights and warm the place up and find the stuff that's still green and bring it inside and make a bunch of food and par-tay!"
By George, I think she's got it!
@existential potential,
Quote:We need to give secular Christmas a proper purpose.
Why? Having a good time isn't purpose enough?
Xmas is a secular holiday to begin with. The celebration was around long before Christianity. We have a myriad holidays like that. Easter. It's the old Spring fertility festival. Halloween. It used to be the start of the new year in the Keltic world. You name a so-called Christian holiday and I'll show you what it used to be before Chrsitianity.
Why do you need a "proper purpose" as an excuse to drink a lot of properly laced eggnog?
@Merry Andrew,
Some people are so wrapped up in their religion, they can't see the forest for the trees.
@DrewDad,
Drewdad wrote:
"What's the point of questioning Christmas every year just so we can wax poetical about how we really get it and everyone else is just so bourgeois?"
surely there will come a time when the majority of people start thinking, "why the hell am I putting a tree up in my house?" we need to reinvent Christmas.
I am guessing you're one of those people who go through the formalities each year, why do it?
@existential potential,
Can it be simply that our children are grown up, and we have very few visitors during the holidays?
@existential potential,
existential potential wrote:I am guessing you're one of those people who go through the formalities each year, why do it?
At the most basic level, because I enjoy it. My daughters enjoy it. My wife enjoys it. I like making them happy.
Why stop at questioning Christmas? Why not question your entire existence? Why are you here, and why do you stay here?
@George,
Candlemass (now known as Groundhog Day in the USA --see how it degenerates?) started out as a Keltic rite of weather prognostication. There was a Druid goddess named Bridie (or Bridy). She was supposedly in charge of the weather so the Kelts used the holday to ask how much longer this cursed winter weater would go on this year. They kept on doing it after the time of St. Patrick and they'd all been baptized. So the church decided that a day that corresponds roughly to the one dedicated to the goddess Bridey should become the Feast of Saint Bridget. (Get it? Briday? Bridget?) The next day would be called Candlemass because the old Druids used to light candles to guess from the droppings how long this winter **** was going to continue. We still do it. As I said, in the USA we now call it Ground Hig Day.
I love the tag someone put on this thread.
That was you who put that tag on it, right DD?
@Setanta,
<practices looking innocent>
Secular Christmas is nothing new. Look at Chas. Dickens' "A Christmas Carol", something like 160 years old now, and if it mentions Jesus at all it's merely in passing. It's all about family and jollity and dancing and having a good time with those you love, and caring for those who don't have that and giving something to them. Scrooge doesn't turn into a Christian, he just turns into a good man (not at all necessarily the same thing).
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