The Antichristian Phenomenon

First of all, Happy/Merry whatever-holiday-you-celebrate. Hopefully everyone is enjoying the day off work and school and putting on a few pounds with tasty cookies.

Full article below the jump:

On another note, I have been thinking a lot in the past few days about this topic, after a rather heated conversation with my dad on our drive from the airport. As he still doesn’t “officially” know about my stance on the whole “God Question”, he saw no problems complaining to me about a display put up at a state courthouse by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, while taking the Bill ORLY point of view that such displays were offensive and should not be displayed at Christmastime. Naturally, I pressed him on the issue, receiving the all-too-predictable response that “Atheists need to realize they live in a Christian Culture and Christmas is a Christian Holiday”, “Atheists would get more respect if they weren’t shoving their beliefs onto others”, and so on. Yes, yes, we’re all going to go crawl into a hole, hold our tongue and plug our ears for the holiday, and of course–all year by extension! Then we’ll certainly get the support we need to stand our ground politically, after all, “the reason gay marriage is being so strongly opposed in some states is because they’re so loud about it.” (This is an actual quote from the conversation…)

Additionally, tonight I performed my yearly duty and attended Christmas Eve Mass with my parents. No blow by blow account this year, but the homily was worth mentioning. The priest, who I did not recognize, gave the yearly guilt trip, but put a frustrating spin on the whole affair. Broken down to its core elements, he railed against “taking Christ out of Christmas”, which was quite expected, but in the process made some quite illogical and even insulting leaps. First, he went through a series of “Christmas is supposed to be about X, if you believe Y”, where X was some warm/fuzzy or fundamentally secular message (Santa, family, etc), and Y was a series of sources (the media, advertisements, stories, songs, etc). Then, he went through a sequence of devaluing the X messages, such as eroding the message about families being together by making statements about dysfunctional families, awkward gatherings, jealousy, and so on, or gifts/Santa with rampant commercialism. If we end here and want to be cynical and pessimistic Scrooges, this is not an unreasonable view. After all, I’m sure everyone can relate to awkward family gatherings and disgust over the transition of a domestic holiday into a commercial one. The core of the Christmas experience is not always the shiny package under the tree, but it can be quite different and even dark when opened.

However, this is not where it ended. He continued by inserting the expected religious message, where we accept the baby in the manger (“His arms are open, will yours be?”), then went the extra step by asserting that if we did NOT embrace the Christian side of Christmas we would be stuck with the devalued, pessimistic side of all the X messages. This is implied as opposing the idea that if we do accept Christ’s half of Christmas we’ll be blessed with the optimistic sides of the X messages? I see what you did there, way to set up a false dichotomy. The train of logic here has not simply broken down, it’s become a failtrain.

Now, I was poking around the internet tonight, reading some articles about the new Atheist Guide to Christmas book to lift my spirits from over an hour of a bizarre, illogical attempted guilt trip when I stumbled across this article: “Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holiday” (linked from “An Atheist’s Defense of Christmas”)

This ties in quite well with the above two problems. Both my father and the priest, representatives of a much larger population, want Christmas to remain a holiday with a primarily religious focus, despite rampant commercialism and increased secularization. Both claim that by keeping “Christ in Christmas”–partly by promotion of Christian symbology and terminology, partly by suppression of alternative views–all the “true meanings” will shine through, everyone will be happy, and family gatherings will be warm and fuzzy and full of love (if you follow the priest’s twisted logic, that is). Maybe that is true, maybe it isn’t, but following Justin Bills here, I think the real question we need to be asking is slightly different. He says:

But I was faced with a stark question in this debate. “Is saying ‘Merry Christmas’ really putting Christ back in Christmas?”

In a word: NO. And we can extend that, not only will Christian terminology not reclaim your holiday, but suppressing the nontheist voice won’t either, or even attempting to follow the fail-logic of the priest’s sermon. Justin Bills understands this, and answers his own question quite well:

As a Christian, I understand that Christmas is a beautiful celebration of God sending His Son to for the salvation of all. I believe it is “Good news” as the angels put it. I want everyone to know about the “good news”. But I also recognize that for some this “good news” doesn’t come off as “good” at all. It’s a reminder that Christians at times don’t look anything like Jesus. “Merry Christmas” can be another reminder of the history of pain and oppression Christians have put people through.

That’s right, Justin. The Jesus story is not “good news” to everyone, and frequently Christians look nothing like Jesus, and shame his story with their bigotry. And for nontheists–as well as other religions currently oppressed by Christianity–it is not just a reminder of the past, but of the present. Every time we see a religious representation of Christmas or have to listen to Christians use this opportunity to lash out against those who don’t think like they do, nontheists are painfully reminded that we are still a marginal minority, still struggling to be heard.

Christmas may have religious roots, but stronger than those religious roots are the cultural underpinnings, which even predate the religious connotations. There is no reason nontheists can’t celebrate a cultural holiday–just as there is no reason theists can’t steal holidays from other cultures and mold them to fit their own ends (Just don’t expect us to honor them as such!). Culture is fluid, it grows and adapts. NOTHING will reclaim this holiday to be a purely religious holy day. Theists can shout Merry Christmas until they’re blue in the face, vandalize FFRF signs, set up elaborate manger scenes, or claim the shifting terminology is part of a secular progressive agenda, but one fact remains. Culture has already moved on, and Christmas has become a holiday for everyone, not just Christians.

Time to accept this fact and move on, striving for the optimistic X messages. Despite what many religious might have you believe, you can realize these values without buying into the Jesus-half of Christmas, just try it. After all…

I’m having a Happy Holiday, and I hope you are too.

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 25th, 2009 at 7:34 am and is filed under Culture, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.