Do all you atheists and agnostics celebrate christmas?

I stole that last line from Kevin Fitzgerald.

See how great Christmas is?

If it weren't for the spirit of the season, you might have kept your plagiarism from us.

Thank you.

I sure do celebrate it, and I sing about Jesus and everything. Don't exactly feel like I need any justification for doing so either.

And quite rightly I believe, no justification is needed for anyone to celebrate anything.

Or to sing anything. I like to sing "shoobeedoobeedoowup, shewup'n dewaaaaw". You like to sing "A might fortress is our lord". Tomeyto, tomuhto.

The christmas cancan
http://link.brightcove.com:80/services/player/bcpid1909243034?bctid=53156488001
I've enjoyed reading this thread. As a child I did the stringing of popcorn and cranberries too. It was hard to string the popcorn because they always broke and my fingers would be bleeding from stabbing myself with the needle, but it was a very pretty and traditional garland.
I love watching A Christmas Story with Peter Billingsly on TV. That was just like my christmas growing up. The movie ends with one of my most fondest christmas memories -sitting in a darkened livingroom with only the tree lights on- the ole big ones- not those dinky little ones we have now-a -days. The tree was real- not artificial- and smelled wonderful. The tree lights glinted off the silver icicles and the old fashioned ornaments while music of peace on earth played softly on the record player. All was right with the world-It was magical.

A Mighty Fortress is Our God

As a kid attending Grace Luthern church it was my favorite.

I've been spending the last few Christmases with my sister, my brother-in-law and their twin daughters in NYC, and we always listen to Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, Patrick Stewart, and his dramatic reading of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol". He brings it to life. See if you can find it on cassette or CD. And that's from the mid-19th century and I'm not sure Jesus is even mentioned in it, except tangentially if that. So it had already gotten pretty secular a century and a half ago.

Then you should enjoy Mendelssohn's Fifth symphony, the Reformation Symphony, the final movement of which is based on Luther's hymn.

In fact, A Christmas Carol was written at the time when two new Christmas "traditions" were being introduced--the Christmas tree and Christmas cards--which were resolutely secular and commercial. Although the tradition of a Christmas tree was not new, it was new then to the English-speaking world.

I sure do!

Yep, i love it . . . not that there's anything partiuclarly Christmassy about it . . . and it was written by a Jew, too, you know . . .

A good number of the Jews in my neighborhood celebrate Christmas along with the rest of us. Christmas isn't just for atheists and agnostics, ya know.

I'd say it's for anyone with the price of admission, and that price is not high. The entire thread is rather a silly thing, since the holiday has little to nothing to do with its alleged religious association. It also treats atheists and agnostics as though they were some horribly perverse group of people who are alien to the rest of society. But you get that with religious people, among others . . .

you don't think you might be getting carried away? just a tiny bit?

Aurorell's question was pretty simple. Though I'm not sure how s/he/it thought a few posters on this thread at A2K represent "all you atheists and agnostics".

Ha! As ofttimes explained above, Christianity is a Johnny-come-lately around this time of year.

An English citizen in the Middle Ages: "Our Yule celebrations have gotten pretty christianised these days....still, have you gathered your holly and mistletoe yet?"

In the rump of the Long Parliament, after having executed the inconvenient King Charles, the members observed that there was no good reason to assume that Jesus was born on December 25th, and that it simply commemorated a pagan festival. They went to work as though it were any other day. The citizens of London were said to resent that.

No, I don't see them as "a horribly perverse group of people alien to the rest of society" (your words). I was just wondering if they participated in the massive celebration of christ's birth- "christ"mas -since they don't necessarily believe in Christ. Obviously, from this thread, everyone has their own way of celebrating the holiday season.

Further to that, when I was growing up (Glasgow, Scotland, 1950s) Christmas Day was not a recognised holiday. People worked as normal, maybe left for home a little early.
The big holiday was New Years Day, and New Years Eve, called Hogmanay.
That's when the serious parties were on.
Nowadays, there's two weeks of partying....maybe a bit excessive.