deconversion

I just saw a friend post on FaceBook that christ is the reason for the season. It made me realize that this will be the first year holiday season where I have admitted to myself and others that I am an atheist.

Over the last few years, I have essentially taken all "religious" tokens out of my private thoughts on the holidays. However, I think this year I'd like to revamp the entire way I celebrate the holidays. I do want to continue to enjoy the season, but without the religious connotations. Any ideas?

Hi! I read your introduction, and it seems that our situations are a ton alike. This will be my first Christmas as an agnostic. In previous years I just hadn't admitted it to myself either, and I just went through the religious motions for the sake of parents and siblings.

To be honest, I wish I could just avoid the holidays all together. I don't like the consumerism anymore than the religion really. This year I decided that I will still fly to visit my family, but it will either be a couple weeks before or after Christmas. This avoids all the crazy airport traffic and also gets me out of the church stuff.

Now, as far as what my hubby and I should do together on this holiday that we no longer celebrate religiously, I need ideas for that too. Maybe we should start some of our own weird traditions that we do while everyone else is singing about Jesus. LOL Sometimes it is hard to contemplate things like this, because Christmas used to be such a meaningful time personally. Now I just don't know what to think about it.

I've basically just taken the Christmas tradition and cut Christ out of it. There's still so much more to the season than just Jesus and gifts, and I realized it was those things that I really loved about the holiday anyway.

Christ really is not the "reason for the season," considering the fact that cultures across the world (many who had never heard the name "Christ") have celebrated a holiday sometime around December 22 for thousands of years.

I would gladly opt out of Christmas, but I have a large extended family that takes holidays very seriously. In a perfect world, I would spend Christmas alone with my husband drinking hot coco, eating cookies, and exchanging modest gifts in front of a warm log fire. (I'll keep the gifts part, because I truly love both giving and receiving them, so any excuse is a good one!) Instead I have to travel back to the home town that I hate, spend a few days sleeping in someone else's bed, and attempt to avoid all the conversation about how we're so end the near times and how there's a war on Christmas.

Some of you might find this book, which recently came out, helpful and humerous for navigating Christmas as a new non-Christian: The Atheist's Guide to Christmas

Axial Tilt is the reason for the season! Quite a few of our friends celebrate the Solstice.

I can also recommend Festivus (for the rest of us) and of course the holy Pastafarian Holiday that we call "Holiday". It extends from Thanksgiving-ish through New Years at least, and is celebrated by eating pasta and drinking grog and generally having a good time.

A twitter friend also suggested a celebration of Winter Solstice to keep with the feeling of the holidays. Not a bad idea. I'm going to give this some thought and research.

Thanks for all the ideas!

This one just seems easy to me. Christmas is so much a regular, secular holiday that there is no need to even think about the religious aspects of it.

I just had a good idea. Sometimes in the past we have done Christmas cards and sometimes not. I find myself wanting to do some sort of card this year, and I was thinking it would be focused on thankfulness for all of friendship and support I've received these past years. So it occurred to me - I will do my cards at Thanksgiving instead of Christmas. Maybe it will be our new tradition and a nice way to avoid the religious stuff. :)

i've been attending wiccan rituals for the past 6 months at my friend's house and it's been a really fun way to celebrate the seasons without religious connotation. we take time out of our lives to socialize, eat together, and honor the cycles of the earth/cosmos which is what the 'season' is about anyway! these gatherings have been invaluable to me as a recovering christian, giving me community and celebration in a way that feels comfortable, interesting, and traditional in a pre-christian sense. i like that when we talk about or invoke the 'gods' and 'goddesses', we know that we're talking about figurative beings, no one thinks they're actually looking down upon us, spying on our every move and determining our eternal fates!

Here is my take on Christmas - We (Society) are doing it all backwards. Come on, what is Christmas supposed to be about? The birth of a baby, right? So when do you celebrate the birth of a baby? Before it is born or afterwards? Think about it. From Halloween on (if not earlier) we sing and listen to songs announcing that the baby is here, let's celebrate, then the day after the birth if not the actual day (Christmas), down go the decorations, the songs are turned off, and everything is put away for next year. Does that make sense?

Historically speaking, the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas was something like a mini-Lent, a time where you waited for the coming birth. Then, AFTER the baby was born, then the celebration began. The Christmas season and the celebration lasted until January 6th (at least in Western Christianity, I think the Eastern Christians do things a little differently). That's where the song Twelve Days of Christmas comes in. So if we are going to celebrate Christmas, at least those who still believe in Christianity, don't you think we ought to do it right?

Incidentially, one of the reasons the Pilgrims came to the New World was to get away from Christmas, which they considered a pagan and popish holiday. In fact, it was illegal to celebrate Christmas in some of the American colonies prior to Independence and probably for some decades afterwards. Christmas was regarded as something no true Christian participated in, if you celebrated Christmas, you were looked upon with suspicion. Now it is the other way around, if you don't celebrate Christmas, you are somehow un-American, unless of course you are Jewish, and have somewhat of an excuse. I used to enjoy Christmas when I was younger, but as I get older I dislike the blatant pressure to celebrate. You know what I mean--if you don't put on the holiday act, you are called a Scrooge or worse. Christmas--or any other holiday--was never meant to be like that. Quite frankly, it's not fun anymore.

By the way, maybe we ought to update some of those Christmas carols--"Glory be to the Newborn King." I'm an American and we haven't had kings here since 1776. So the term king doesn't have any real meaning for me. (Especially when I look across the ocean to a certain royal family). Any suggestions?

So this year I, too, am seeking a way through the Winter Season without the same religious traditions--in a family that still values them. I have found that I gravitate strongly toward the Christmas Carol "Scrooge" character as a model. Not the crotchety, miserly version, but the person who finds meaning in connectedness to family and community following a dramatic existential confrontation with his own isolation and mortality.

Sure religion was part of that cultural myth as well, but the point of the story seems to be life through connected community. Don't know what traditions I will uphold--but preparing the traditional recipes of my family, visiting with friends and family, and reflecting on life in such as a way to celebrate renewal of hope will likely be part of it. Of course the fun part happens prior to Dec 25 when I plan to nurture the "Bah, Humbug" attitude of Old Ebenezer as a subversive rejection of the superficial materialism and religiosity in preparation for the eventual life celebration.

This one just seems easy to me. Christmas is so much a regular, secular holiday that there is no need to even think about the religious aspects of it.  

Put up your lights, your tree, your Santa, your stockings, and so on. 

Put on the CDs with "I'll be Home for Christmas" etc. Or heck, put on "O Holy Night", "Adeste Fideles", and Handel.  They are beautiful works and should be enjoyed.  

Give gifts with pretty wrapping. 

Use the "Santa Tracker" on the web. 

Eat good food, drink up, watch football, yuck it up with guests.  

If someone wants to bring up "the Christmas story", let 'em. It's a traditional myth that accompanies the holiday just like "the Rudolph story". 

I've always known non-Christians who celebrated Christmas. They do it no differently from the Christians I know, except they don't go to church, don't pray over the food, and don't try to force baby Jesus into every crack of the conversation. They don't force baby Jesus out of every crack of the conversation either. He is just one more part of the whole holiday myth. 

So, FWIW, my recommendation is: Don't try to recreate the holiday wheel. Just roll with it. If baby Jesus wants to ride along for a turn or two, let him. Then roll on with the elves.

I couldn't agree more with this plan.  There is already too much to prepare for with the holiays and too much stress for me to worry about how I am going to completely remove Christianity from Christmas.  I'm all for mistletoe and rum-laced eggnog, and presents under the tree, and a lovely ham with all of the trimmings.  I don't mind a caroler or seven or eight.  I will still put the tree up and hang some trimmings, and take delight in my sons' faces on Christmas morning.

I'm not suggesting that doing otherwise would necessarily equal what I'm about to say, but for me at least, one thing that has always bugged me about Christians (even when I was one) is that they have to have everything their way.  If the ten commandments are taken out of the courthouse, wahhhhh, wahhhhh, wahhhhh.  If the creche is not displayed in the town square, wahhhhh, wahhhh, wahhhh.  I always thought they were acting like jackasses with such whining and moaning and victimhood.  I don't want to become them and now that I'm on a deconversion journey, insist that everything be my way.   So, as you say,  if baby Jesus and some elves want to join the ride, I say let 'em.   The more the merrier.

 

 

I agree with Leo and Austin. I grew up in a nonreligious home, but we always celebrated Christmas with the tree and Christmas songs on the 8 track and the gifts. It was very secular. Why should I give that up just because I don't believe Jesus was God? Lights are pretty. Gifts are nice. I don't believe in whatever Halloween is about either, but I like candy and like seeing the kids get all dressed up. Have fun, dammit!

Well, coming from various fundamentalist churches, where I was repeatedly told I shouldn't do Christmas because it was really a pagan holiday at its roots (and they're right):

I have decided, "Screw it, I'm going to celebrate what this season really is: Happy Solstice Everybody!"

*That* should make everybody happy.