Of course. I just happened to pick out the first aggressively advertising church off the top of my head. My apologies to everyone in this thread for making a false equivalence. Let's carry on and just forget I posted anything.
That's food for thought, Marged. Also, I misstated what I meant to say, which was not "celebrate Christmas" per se. I mean that one can attend a Christmas party and enjoy the food and drink (and people, if that's your thing), think that Christmas trees and Christmas lights are pretty and enjoyable, and maybe even rock out to secular Christmas tunes. Nonetheless, Penelope has a point. Personally, I give Jesus about three seconds of thought during Christmas season, but as my wife is fond of declaring, I'm a heathen.
You're aware that this is the Santorum, right? You don't have to be so nice to these godless humanists.
It's ok. You just had a momentary lapse dreaming about turkey overload tomorrow. I'm having to wear a bib to contain the drool myself. Oh, wait..I have to go to my MIL's house for Thansgiving and she can't cook worth a shit. I guess I can take off this fucking bib.
I'm not a Christian (I was raised in a completely secular family on both sides). We celebrated Christmas the same way we celebrated Thanksgiving and Easter -- with a family gathering centered around food -- but Christmas was special because you decorated and exchanged presents. Some of the decorations were related to a pretty fable about a child born in a stable and welcomed by angels, while others were shiny objects hanging from a tree, and all were festive. So from my personal anecdotal experience, you can in fact enjoy a Christ-less Christmas without cognitive dissonance. My in-laws have always done the same, and continue even now that the extended family includes people from an impressive array of cultures and religions. (Most of the immediate family isn't practicing, but we usually have folks who were raised Catholic, Protestan Jewish, Muslim, and a Buddhist at the Christmas table, as well as my generation who are all godless heathens.) I kind of like that ad in the way I like snarky image macros, but I personally wouldn't post it in public. The girl looks kind of like a little bitch.
I think that Christmas is a secular holiday with religious origins. It can be acknowledged and celebrated in multiple ways that do not require any religious belief or attribution. Celebrating Christmas doesn't mean I share or respect the Christian faith any more than wearing cotton means that I support slavery.
I don't think anyone in my family believes in Catholicism but we'd still go to mass every year at Christmas. For some reason my father insisted on it and he's probably the least religious or at least spiritual of us all. Then we'd visit relatives, come home, eat turkey and not go to mass for another year.
If you've already got the tree, might as well go full-Pagan and accept that you're celebrating the winter solstice. Which actually has the merit of being something worth celebrating because it denotes the very real phenomenon that each day forward will be longer and warmer than the day before; it's the starting point of rebirth and flourish of life born anew in Spring. Even our ancient ancestors figured that out without the need of making shit up.
To me, Thanksgiving is the secular holiday with religious origins. It originated from the Pilgrims' idea of Sukkot, a Jewish holiday, but those overtones are completely gone. Whereas Christmas has "Christ" in the name, mangers all over the place, songs like "We three kings", and so on. As a Jew, I might even enjoy listening to carols, going to a holiday party, or whatever, but that doesn't make Christmas a secular holiday, any more than a Christian friend giving me a Hanukkah present and coming to my house to eat latkes makes hanukkah a secular holiday.
Also, I'm wondering if regional differences are affecting what people see as the messaging of Christian churches. In some parts of the country I lived in you'd see a lot of "For God so loved the world..." signage - positive messaging that I can't imagine anyone getting huffy about. Here in Baptist country it's generally all about repentance and sin and bible quotes taken out of context to convey negative messages (which frustrates the hell out of me).
I could really go for a Solstice celebration. Every year when my co-workers start bringing in Christmas cookies I ponder making some sun-shaped solstice cookies, but I haven't yet had the cojones. Which, I guess, says something about not wanting to buck the Christian-normative culture even in secular California.
Off-topic, but I'm personally in favor of elevating the level of discussion even in the Sanctum. Sure, the rules allow one to blow off steam without harsh consequences but if I wanted to wallow in that constantly I'd go to the rest of the internet. Now back to your regularly scheduled Christian-baiting. ;) Make sun-shaped cookies that have "Happy Holidays" or "Enjoy your winter break" on them or on the box you put them in the kitchen with, and see if you get even one negative response.
I was joking, of course, and I agree. I think it's usually pretty civil here except for the unreprentant Brett-haters. I haven't felt the need to flame anyone since sinij got his walking papers (as an aside, P&R at Qt3 is now a wonder* to behold) * may be pronounced "existential terror"
I think there's a cookie continuum of office acceptability around the holidays: Christmas trees, mistletoe, snowmen: not explicitly Christmas (despite the name of one of them; that's a pagan symbol that's certainly more of a "solstice cookie" than the proposed sun shape), so ok. Santa, reindeer, presents: obviously Christmas but not really religious, probably ok but not the best choice. Bibles, crosses, nativity imagery: please don't. Cookie tin full of Chick tracts: you are a monster.
If you bring cookies or any form of tasty snack it does need to cross a pretty heavy line to be unacceptable. It's a cookie, we like cookies! Actually, bring brownies. I really want a brownie.
How about if the cookies all had "And Jesus Wept" piped on top? Probably would make more sense as an Easter thing I suppose.
I'm sure people would happily eat the cookies, but they might tease me. I'm sensitive! Plus, I wouldn't want to falsely represent myself as Pagan. I'm a godless heathen, dammit. This being PC California, my boss would probably start bending over backwards to schedule to be off on Samhain or something.
You should do just a square, undecorated cookie to symbolize the nothingness in which you believe/the void at the center of your soul.
My parents would shit a brick if I told them I was buying them all Winter Solstice gifts this year. I may do it just to troll their Baptist asses.
You could also go with the Feast of Sol Invictus. In theory that ought to be something they could get behind since Jesus is also historically a sun god or some such. Also, Feast of Sol Invictus is more fun to say than Christmas. And the sun is pretty much the basis for most life on earth, so kudos to it!
The next county over is Yolo County, where I happen to live, so YOLO on cookies might just be taken as me trying to "represent , yo"
Not to be troll-y, but what has helped more? In general, atheists are certainly better off now than they were a thousand years ago.
Christmas is now a fairly big deal in Japan, and in HK christmas spending over took lunar new year spending some time ago. So, christmas has been appropriated as a non christian festival by some cultures.
I've already got "war on CHRISTmas" type cartoons and posts filtering into my FB feed. So utterly bizarre to me.
Heh - I like Scotland, where within living memory Christmas wasn't even a holiday (only became so in 1958) and certainly wasn't much of a big deal until the 1970s/80s. Reason being that the Church of Scotland thought it at best papist, and most lkely pagan
There's no war on Christmas. The worship of money and conspicuous consumption are alive and well. And unopposed. now, if you'll excuse me I have to go sleep in a tent in the Best Buy parking lot. Tis the season for savings you know...
Y'all know Festivus is a thing, right? Just give people little lengths of aluminum tubing and challenge them to wrestling matches. Fuck cookies (fudge is better).
I'm pretty sure if Ingmar wasn't sure I'd wupp him at the Feats of Strength, he'd prefer we celebrate that. :P That said, Ingmar's family is utterly non-religious, but they still celebrate Christmas. They're way more into Thanksgiving, though! I asked his mother once what flavor of Christian she nominally was (as she found my nominal Catholicism utterly weird, even though I was Lapsed by the time she met me) and she couldn't actually remember off the top of her head. <3
I think believing in god and being religious are two very different things. One is delusion and the other is communal..like the howling of wolves.
