Christmas Without Jesus

My wife and I have both been atheists from the early teens, but anybody visiting us in the Christmas time would hardly notice any difference. Christmas tree is there, the traditional Finnish Christmas dishes are cooking in the oven and the Christmas carols are playing in full blast.

And why not, as everybody with at least a rudimentary knowledge of history knows that Christmas has really nothing to do with the Christian beliefs.

Christmas or Yule as the feast was originally called was a big event for the pagan Germanic nations long before they were converted to Christianity.

Also the Romans had a big feast celebrating the Sol Invictus or the unconquerable sun on just on the same days of December. The shortest day of the year was and is inevitably a great reason for a feast for all the nations living in the northern parts of Europe.

Christians realized soon that could not compete with these age old traditions as following the yearly ultimate stages of sun is a extremely natural reason for having a feast.

They gave up suppressing these pagan festivities and instead created a convenient myth that claimed that the alleged founder of their religion was born on that very day.

The creation of this new myth was done centuries after the formation of the church. The new story did because of its convenience spread like wildfire throughout the Christian world.

Nowadays you would hard pressed to find a Christian that did not genuinely believe that a boy named Jesus was born on that very day of the year. This is a fact of life, even there is not a shred of evidence to support any such claims, but lack of evidence has never been a hindrance in the matters of faith...

Christmas has since developed to be a feast that celebrates the closeness of the Family and the spirit of giving. At the same time its real religious connections have became almost nonexistent in most families in developed Western world.

The main function of Christmas is to celebrate the family ties and to give an opportunity to cease all normal activities. Because of this ceasefire of activity it is possible to find time to search for the inner peace and harmony as there are no strict schedules or outside places to go.

Many people have a misconception that these feelings of inner peace and harmony must somehow be connected to a religion, even though religion is not needed in any way in attaining these things.

The main thing in Christmas for many is the rare opportunity of the family to come together in a mood of joyful feasting. This feeling of togetherness does however not need to have any religious connections whatsoever.

I don't think that non-religious persons would have any reasons not to celebrate this feast of close family ties that can sometimes reach almost mystical proportions with the groving feelings of peace and harmony.

For many the price of giving up Christmas when giving up the old-fashioned and outdated religious belief-systems can be too high.

I believe that an atheist can with a full hart celebrate this feast of the light that conquers the darkness with all the age-old traditions associated with it.

I have great difficulty in seeing anything religious in Santa Claus, Christmas tree, Christmas decorations or even most of the modern Christmas carols.

This feast has in the core always been a celebration of light over darkness, even a part of the population has seen it fit to simultaneously celebrate the birthday of the founder of their religion.

We have no reason to dump these age-old traditions even if the Christian church has for centuries tried to hijack them as its own.