Weekly Poll: Should Atheists Create Secular Holidays?
Many atheists stop following the traditional, religious holidays observed by religious people and theists. Others still observe them, but they have lost their former meaning. Some atheists have tried to create new, secular holidays as replacements - like Solstice and Darwin Day. Is this a good idea?
There can be a lot of social value in holidays, whatever ostensible reasons one has for celebrating them. Holidays can serve to form a connection to your own past by evoking memories of past celebration. Holidays can form and reinforce connections with the friends and family with whom you celebrate. Holiday events can also create connections across an entire society as people develop parallel experiences which forge subtle bonds.
Rituals that are integral to holidays can be important because they are often significant means of social communication. Ritual is a type of behavior which "says things" rather than "does things." Sometimes what is said can be negative, for example rituals which serve to reinforce a person's status as someone subordinate when they should really be equal. Often, however, what is said can be quite positive because it lets others know that you continue to care about them.
This means that the rituals in holidays can be necessary means by which relationships with others are reinforced or even furthered — and in ways which may not be possible in quotidian contexts. I'm not sure, though, if any of this is enough of a reason to create new holidays on completely secular foundations and for completely secular reasons. What do you think?
Comments
I think little traditions and larger celebrations are very important.
One little one I do is every March 15th I serve Ceaser Salad at dinner. My friends think I am odd - but how is it really different from drinking green beer on March 17th.
Little traditions can be fun - even when they don’t go any further than your family (or in some cases yourself)
I’d be against something like Darwin Day. It would give the anti-evolution people something to point at when they want to make their claim that agreement with mainstream science is a religion, especially since there isn’t a Newton Day or an Einstein Day.
Since atheism is not a religion, ideology, or philosophy, but simply the absence of affirmative belief in theism, it seems a bit odd to me to create holidays based around it.
There are secular holidays: New Years Day, Presidents Day, Memorial Day, The Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and my favorite, Christmas!
I’m only partly joking about Christmas. It is my favorite holiday simply because it’s provided me with so many good memories. Some people can say that “Jesus is the reason for the season,” but for me the reason for the season is celebrating friendships family ties. And presents! Doesn’t get more secular than that.
I agree Tom, those are all excellent secular holidays and even when I was a young child, Thanksgiving and Christmas to me meant lots of fun, great food and sweets, the anticipation of gifts, seeing relatives and friends at parties, pretty decorations, singing, and holiday shows on TV. There was very rarely anything mystical or religious about Christmas, save for the occasional reminder of a saviour’s birth. Santa Claus and Rudolph were much more to the fore than god or Jesus. Though the presents galore were always nice, the best part was spending time at home with friends and family. Christmas has become secularized and that’s a good thing, as more people can celebrate it together for the mere enjoyment of it.
I do think having atheist holidays of our own is a good idea, but perhaps they should be placed at times of year that will not make it seem like we are trying to “replace” the original religious days with the godless ones…that would get the religious reich hardliners’ panties in a bunch. Though it is fun to watch them get into their little tizzies, the tizzies would distract people from seeing how much fun the new atheist holidays will be.
Call it a party, and I’ll be there!
If you look at the way the Japanese celebrate Christmas, you will see the secular nature of the celebration.
Before it was hijacked by the Christians for the birth of their mythical godman, the season was celebrated throughout the Graeco-Roman world as the winter solstice or new year celebration. It is only the term “Christ” within the word “Christmas” which reminds us of its relation to the Jesus story. If you want a reason for the season (or rather, a reason for having a day off work), then celebrate the solstice. For that matter, we should agitate for celebrating the summer solstice as well.
The Japanese have a green Santa, and it could serve as a model for us in the West. With the urgent need to bring the mind of the public to the matter of global warming, perhaps the green-secular movement could change the colour of Santa to green; and change the date from the 25th to the 22nd; and call it Green Santa Day.
I don’t see the need for holidays being made mandatory time off actually. I’d rather no mandatory holidays on the list and people just take time off for themselves as they like, such as for birthdays, personal celebrations and so on. Holidays (IMO) are nothing more than big shopping days for retail stores.
Cancelling Christmas presented only a minor adjustment until several years later, as I attempted to raise my children as atheists (as I have done successfully). Fortunately, birthdays, New Year’s, and (cheating a bit here, perhaps) Halloween all took on magnified significance. I’ve thus learned first hand the importance of seasonal ritual. As atheists gain the upper hand demographically, Darwin Day and Solstice day sound like great ideas and serve us better as yearly milestones than those silly consolidated substitute Christmases, like Kwanja and others I won’t mention. But don’t we already see a social shift away from those obnoxious Easters and Christmases, or am I just projecting my wishful thinking?
Three of our holidays were celebrated as holidays before the Christians converted them to a religious meaning. Of course Christmas was the new year, Easter was the celebration of Spring and harvest festivals have been celebrated around the world for thousands of years before an official Thanksgiving day was declared and a myth about religious pilgrims sharing with Indians.
Of course those Pilgrims had much to be thankful for because without the goodwill of the Indians bringing them food they would have surely starved to death. But that is not the reason people have always celebrated with harvest festivals.
The rest of our ‘official’ holidays are secular but in some way celebrate sacrifice and/or victory in wars. I don’t think either gives a positive look to the future.
Earth Day should become an official holiday celebrated by everyone in ways that promote a healthy environment and reject the old ways of capitalistic consumption.