Christmas Holiday Season: Origins, Atheists, Church/State Separation

Lent is the penitential period of 40 days from Ash Wednesday to Easter when Christians fast and do penance in preparation for Easter and to spiritually "join" Jesus with the fasting and meditation he did in the wilderness. The principle behind Lent is asceticism: denying material, physical pleasures for the sake of the soul. Atheists reject Christian mythology and can turn Lent on its head by obs…

Multiculturalism can mean a lot of things, but it's generally part of an argument that minority cultural traditions and practices should be given a more equal status alongside majority cultural practices which have long dominated people's lives. This presents challenges to people prefer those majority cultural practices, but sometimes they find a way to make it work for them. One example is the attempt to defend explicitly Christian celebrations of Christmas in a multicultural context.

Christians treat Christmas as a Christian holiday, and it certainly started out that way, but we can tell a lot about the real nature of holidays by how they are represented in popular culture. The most common, popular, and recognized symbol for Christmas today isn't an infant Jesus or even a manger scene, but Santa Claus. It's Santa who graces all the ads and decorations, not Jesus. Santa Claus is not, however, a religious figure or symbol.

Every year we hear more and more about the so-called Christmas Wars. According to its promoters and alleged 'defenders' of Christmas, the godless liberals and atheists are trying to undermine wholesome Christmas traditions as part of their agenda of undermining Christianity. For these people, this is less about Christmas than it is about...

The term 'juggernaut' is thought to come from a Jagannath, an idol of Krishna pulled along on a cart under whose wheels devotees would throw themselves. Christmas in contemporary America is a juggernaut in that respect: people willingly throw themselves under its wheels and it crushes everything it comes into contact with. You can't escape it...

The most popular symbol of Christmas, except perhaps for Santa Claus, may also be the least Christian: the Christmas Tree. Originally derived from pagan religious celebrations in Europe, the Christmas Tree was adopted by Christianity but never entirely at home in it. Today the Christmas Tree can be a completely secular symbol of Christmas...

Many Christians insist that Christmas is a Christian religious holiday which belongs exclusively to them. While there are many ways to celebrate Christmas in a Christian manner, the simple fact is that there are many important elements to popular Christmas celebrations which have nothing whatsoever to do with religion or Christianity. These...

Many tend to assume that Christmas is a Christian holiday and as such should only really be celebrated by Christians. Non-Muslims don't celebrate Ramadan, right? Although Christmas has largely been a Christian religious holiday, that has changed dramatically. It already included many elements borrowed from other religions, which made it easy to...

Conservative Christians complain about secularists, atheists, and liberals trying to undermine Christmas, but there is little historical understanding and awareness in these complaints. An examination of Christian history indicates that religion has been slowly stripped from Christmas, as well as other Christian holidays, over a long time now -...

Christmas has become generally secular in America, but despite (or perhaps because) of this, it has acquired an almost sacred and untouchable character which people defend to the utmost. Skeptics of Christmas are not received well; those who do object to something about Christmas usually portray themselves as actually defending a 'true'...

Perhaps the mid-winter holiday season centered around Christmas should be a time of festivities, but in America many other things intrude as well. Atheists are faced with questions about whether they should participate and if they should reveal their atheism. Conservative Christians insist that Christmas is meaningless without their religion.

There is a debate among Christians about whether they should celebrate Christmas or not. Some do so because they aren't out as atheists. Some do so in order not to rock the boat among religious family members. Some do so because they always have and don't want to change - or simply enjoy the holiday. Others argue that it should be replaced by a...

In modern America, Christmas is the biggest holiday of the year. More money is spent, more time is invested in celebrations, and more attention is paid to it than any other holiday. All of this time, money, and attention does not translate into greater understanding, though. Few people are aware of the origins of most Christmas traditions; most...

Many conservative evangelical Christians at this time of year want to 'put Christ back in Christmas' and insist that 'Jesus is the Reason for the Season.' With these slogans, they hope to remind people that Christmas is a Christian holiday and that without Christ, there would be no Christmas in the first place. Such Christians are offended that...

Although Santa Claus was originally based upon the Christian figure of Saint Nicholas, a patron saint of children, today Santa Claus is wholly secular. Some Christians object to him because he is secular rather than Christian; some non-Christians object to him because of his Christian roots. He is a powerful cultural symbol which is impossible to ignore, but this doesn't mean that he should simply be accepted without question. There are good reasons to dispense with the tradition.

Christmas can be a difficult time of the year for atheists. Although it has become highly secularized in recent years, the holiday has retained strong religious aspects. Many family celebrations of Christmas also include religious rituals which atheists cannot easily participate in without feeling dishonest. Should atheists even care about...

One recent and disturbing development in America's Culture Wars is the growth of the so-called Christmas Wars. A few influential conservatives are using Christmas as a political weapon against liberals, secularists, and non-Christians. They claim that a secular, anti-Christian conspiracy is draining Christian meaning from Christmas and devaluing...

The festival of Christmas gets its name from the term Christ's Mass, or a mass performed in honor of Christ. It is at this time that Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. This, however, is not all there is to the modern Christmas holiday

Americans look forward to getting a day off on December 25, a day traditionally (and almost certainly erroneously) been celebrated as the birth day of Jesus Christ, savior for all Christians. What's wrong with that? Nothing, really - except possibly the fact that it is a holiday which is legally recognized/mandated by our government. Should...

Atheists spend quite a lot of time discussing religion and deeper questions of whether or not there is any rational justification for believing in gods. However, there are also much more practical issues which merit close discussion. One issue which affects pretty much all atheists is how, or even if, they might celebrate local religious holidays.

American schools have been explicit in celebrating the Christmas holiday season. So long as America has been predominantly Christian in composition, such a focus went unchallenged and even unnoticed by the majority. That's no longer the case.

Surely the most obvious and divisive of the holiday questions is that of religious displays in public. These generate the most discussion, the most debate, and of course the most lawsuits - including a couple of high-profile Supreme Court cases. Understanding these issues go a long way towards helping us understand the entire spectrum of social...

This holiday season is, naturally enough, heavily structured with tradition - indeed, tradition is very much the lifeblood of any holiday. We have trick-or-treating during Halloween, family dinner during Thanksgiving, Christmas shopping for most of December, and of course the series of rancorous lawsuits.

Every year America endures titanic battles between the evil forces of secular atheism and the virtuous forces of traditional Christianity. Fortunately, the forces of evil have been making significant strides in their efforts to destroy American Christianity. This past year was one of our best yet, with evil atheists achieving important...

What would you do if your community erected or permitted a religious creche display at Christmas, but nothing secular and nothing for any other religion? Megan Hartley complained and as it turns out, the borough council already knew that their actions were illegal so they immediately moved the creche. Local complaints led to a reversal of that...