American culture has been dominated by Christianity and Christian traditions for so long that Christmas is now celebrated by many non-Christians. This is one reason why Christmas is becoming less and less "Christian" every year. Even so, many non-Christians continue to regard Christmas as fundamentally Christian in nature and don't want to celebrate it. Many refuse to have anything to do with the holiday, even in a secular fashion. They don't exchange gifts, don't put up decorations, and even go to work if it's a normal work day.
Read Article: Boycott Christmas & Go To Work: Corporate Culture Benefits When We Work, Ignore Religious Holidays
I am working for the United Kingdom social services during the atheistic, satanic, politically correct ‘winterval’ night.
I look after the elderly and disabled as a full-time professional carer, and one can only say that Godless working is infinetly preferable to spending the day exchanging platitudes with insufferable relatives.
First, I get to keep essential services running in the community, and in sheltered extra care housing. Second, those who work on the 25th and 26th get two days off in lieu, and double-time [£26 per hour].
Not only shall I work from 19:30 on the 25th to 07:30 on the 26th, I shall work another shift from 17:00 – 22:00 later that same day, while others let fly thunder dents into sofas.
It is all worth it – the community and I gain emotionally, physically, and financially, and not a credit card in sight!
There is one downside however: social services are 20 staff members down on Winterval day. Any one prepared to fill the gaps in the roster?
Alan.
I don’t do the decorations of the gifts, but I do not typically go to work (although I often work from home). Going in to work wouldn’t be much of a statement since nobody would even know I was there. Besides, there is the laziness factor to consider.
Seeing as I work at a county club, Christmas is the only holiday I actually get off. In fact, I have to be in at 3:00 today. ~375 will be there, all at once. I don’t give a crap about Christmas, I just like going to my family’s house and enjoying a big meal. Good thing the club’s a Jewish one, otherwise we’d probably have to host a big party for 300
I work in customer service and since the business I work for is closed on Dec. 25, “just going to work” isn’t an option for me. I also celebrate Christmas as a family tradition – even if I objected to it, I live with my family, so it would be kind of hard not to.
Still, the only strictly religious element of the holiday is the Christmas Eve service, which I’m free to opt out of. And I often spend a generous amount of time around the holidays with my significant other’s family, who don’t bother even with that. So on the whole, I don’t see why the way others celebrate should stop me from enjoying the season myself, which I mostly do.
On Christmas, I try to support Chinese restauranteurs with my mates in our Meetup group after any traditional celebration I might have with family or theist friends. Anyone who wants to give me a gift is encouraged to give to my favorite charity instead: Camfed. I do get some toys for underprivileged children, Xmas is really for the kids, right?
Throughout the ’80s, I worked for a company that officially gave the week between Christmas and New Years as vacation, but often, when schedules were tight, expected its engineers and technicians to work the week for “exempt overtime-and-a half” that worked out to less than my starting salary as an engineer. (It didn’t want its REAL hourly employees to work the week, because that would have cost it serious money.) With one year’s exception, and that only because there was a big bonus for all my supervisees on the line, I never did work the holiday week. I remember the year previous, though, when a new manager (earlier managers had known better) walked up to me and asked me to my face how many days of the holiday I was working. I told him, in front of a whole group of people, that he was out of his mind. Then I took those days to recharge, as Ceiling Cat (apologies to Jerry Coyne) intended.
No repercussions, not that I expected any. I knew damn well at the time that I, as a proven senior engineer, had more credibility with upper management than that stupid manager.
Funny that this appears today becasue a local story in the news around here is Pathmark (a local supermarket chain, its parent company A&P) announcing it will be open on Christmas Day and the store’s unions are all up in arms about it. There are plenty of people who work on Christmas such as those in essential public services (i.e. police, fire, medical) and even nonessential services such as some movie theaters, restaurants, gas stations, smaller food places such as delis and mini-marts. So why can’t a supermarket be open for a few hours? [I often went to movies on Christmas Day; a Jewish friend often went ot Atlantic City because the traffic and crowds were small.]
And if those Pathmark employees work on Christmas receive a multiple of their regular base pay for working on a holiday, then wouldn’t they want to work that day, especially if they do not celebrate Christmas for some reason?