talkmagic.co.uk

in all honesty, should atheists have the moral fibre to work over christmas and other holidays? its only fair surely? no excuses, otherwise...well...what? paganism? just because "others" do it - its the norm?

pull your finger out you fundamental atheists you, stop taking that time off! volunteer to work over the holiday season(s)...

just like logistically, you should believe in alien life forms - because probability wise, aliens do exist...

and also, tell your children as soon as possible that there's no easter bunny, or santa...

seriously though, at work i notice a lot of deviancy - double standards really, that people of all kinds of different belief systems follow/accept this "norm", for the sake of an easy life...which really, is a double standard...

i know of hindu people who take christmas off "'cos the kids are used to it...", and atheists you take christmas off "cos its not really about jesus anymore"...

both are nonsense arguments, if something stands, intrinsically against what you believe in - then peer pressure or anything else should not come into it...

there, i've said it...

Three points:
1) Christmas, sorry, Xmas, is about as much to do with Jesus today as well, something really not jesusy that i can't think of right now whether you think its a ridiculous argument or not it's true.

More importantly ,

2) It's the God botherers that feel the need to make their pointy points, as an atheist i dont feel the need to preach about it, if i did i wouldn't be any different to them. An atheist needs to make no point about christmas, i just don't care about it, but I'm not giving up my most lucrative season to make a point i don't care about.

Finally and most importantly,

3)I want prezzies.

I suspect many would use the *cough*cop-out*cough* "used to be pagan" reasoning, and they're perfectly entitled to if they want. I do know a few people who go round aggressively wishing people a joyful yuletide/winter solstice/whatever the heck else you can say that isn't Christmas.

But to be fair, if you're such a stauch evangelical atheist that you refuse to celebrate Christmas, you'll probably also be annoyed that all these religious fools get time off to mess around with their silly festivals.

And by the same token, Christians also might find it annoying that Muslims get what feels like a bajillion Eid feasts exclusively, whereas the whole world gets their "holy days" off. But then, I've happily joined in with Eid, Diwali and Hanukkah celebrations... so perhaps we could all just learn to enjoy the good cheer and variety that religious festivals sometimes... y'know... might just... almost... well... perhaps... contribute to society...?!

This is why I gave up being rational. You just end up backing yourself into a corner. Now that I'm irrational, I can do what I want without having to justify it to myself or others.

'Harry your not christian nor are you really pagan, dispite what you claim. So how can you celebrate christmas?'

My answer, Because I worship Father Christmas.

Alan Moore said it best, "Invoke not reason. In the end it is too small a deity."

As for atheists working during holidays. I think that should really be for the antithiests. We should work them to death, so we don't have to deal with thier unbearable smuggness aftawards.

This reminds me of the great wisdom of Kermit the frog

Ebenezer Scrooge: I'll see you tomorrow morning at 8.
Rats: [whispering] Ask him, ask him.
Kermit the Frog: Tomorrow's Christmas, sir.
Ebenezer Scrooge: 8:30, then.
Kermit the Frog: Uh, if you please Mr. Scrooge, half an hour off hardly seems customary for Christmas Day.
Rats: No, no.
Ebenezer Scrooge: How much time off *is* customary?
Kermit the Frog: Why, uh... The whole day.
Rats: Yeah, yeah!
Ebenezer Scrooge: The *entire* day?
Rats: No, no. That's the frog's idea...

Kermit the Frog: If you please sir, why open the office tomorrow? Other businesses will be closed; there'll be no one to do business with. It'll waste a lot of expensive coal for the fire!
Rats: Yeah!
Ebenezer Scrooge: It's a poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every December the 25th. But as I seem to be the only man who knows that... take the day.

I think whether an atheist chooses to celebrate Christmas or not comes down to what the function of Christmas is today. It has nothing to do with where the festival comes from, and I know of no atheist who uses its pagan origins as a reason to celebrate it. I think that's pagans, maybe. Most people, of whatever faith, belief or conviction, celebrate Christmas because it is the one time of the year that you can properly down tools and spend time with your family. That is its function, and in a sense has pretty much always been its function. To suggest that if you take the God out of the festival then the festival has no meaning is like saying that if you take God away from a man, then that man becomes immoral.

And that we need the excuse of a religious festival has more to do with capitalism than it does atheism. If consumption didn't go through the roof then, no, we wouldn't get those juicy bank holidays. It's an unwritten contract between man and the machine - if we work really hard, and spend really hard, then we get a break. Kind of like working hard in the summer to ensure there is jam for the winter. Oh.

And of course we should lie to children about Santa. Learning that Santa doesn't exist is a useful step along the way to learning that God doesn't exist.

Though it was written tongue in cheek, and several pints down-my carefully hidden serious point was..

if you are of any belief, then only your god is the correct one. we humour the others, but believe that ours it true and right.

therefore, if you believe all religions are not real, ergo no special holidays for you. xmas exists because of religion.

i find it fascinating that in reality a lot of people, of faith, as well as ones of logic and science, will find reasons to celebrate something..ANYTHING! and their belief system gets forgotten and overshadowed by the promise of cake, presents and time off.

if atheists, the fundamental ones, want to be taken seriously, then have the moral fibre to stop making weak excuses.

Jean Eugene Roberts wrote:Because I worship Father Christmas.

He didn't die on the cross for nothing you know. Take the day!

Yeah, make the atheists work on Christmas Day! That'll teach 'em!

Personally I see Christmas as a time when we thank Father Christmas and the Christmas Elves for all the hard work they've put in during the past year, and I also find myself enjoying the pagan twinkly lights in the dark holly and the ivy-ness of it all. Plus I get to watch Muppet's Christmas carol. Which reminds me, it's traditionally a time of telling a ghost story or two around the roaring Yuletide Log, which always goes down well in Castle Voodini.

I think also a distinction has to be made between celebrating christmas and taking time off from working at christmas.

When I worked in a shop, the only days of the year that it was shut were Christmas day, Boxing Day and Easter Sunday. Then, when the management team heard that other shops were opening on Boxing day and making lots of money, we started opening on Boxing day too. I'm pretty sure that if it was profitable and the company thought they could get away with it, we would have opened on Christmas Day and Easter too. The reason then that I had Christmas day off was because I wasn't allowed to work that day.

Now I work for a university and we have the time between christmas and new year off because nobody wants to work over that period. I'm happy to have that time off because, although christmas doesn't mean much to me ( and I usually reach a point when it really starts to annoy me) I'm happy to be not working for a bit. If I could take other religious holidays off too and still get paid, I would, as I much prefer to be at home doing my own thing than working.

Similarly, last sunday I was in church for my neice's christening of which i was the godfather. I also did the same thing for my nephew a couple of years ago. As I don't believe in a god, I have no worries about upsetting any divine beings by attending a religious ceremony in their name because what could they conceivably do to punish me? Continue to not exist but in a more aggresive manner? The reason I am my neice and nephews godfather is because I love them very much and I agree with most of what I'm supposed to do as godfather i.e. look after them, provide guidance and help to them in times of trouble, etc. I just won't be saving them from satan and telling them about how great god is.

To summarise- my family and friends are much more important to me than the existence or non-existence of any divine beings so I'd much rather be seen as a hypocrite but spend time with the people who are important to me, than stand up for any form of religious belief or non-belief. As an atheist, religion really isn't that important to me.

I'm an atheist through and through, despite being raised in a christian household and attending church as a child. It's not a choice, I just can't believe in any sort of deity.

It bothers me that people take "atheist" to mean "anti-religion". It doesn't mean that, it means:

unbeliever in God or deities: somebody who does not believe in God or deities

Therefore if my work happens to shut down over christmas because the largely christian population of the country wants to have a celebration, I say go for it. If my jewish friends invite me round to celebrate Chanukah, I'm probably going to accept. Just because I don't believe in the god they believe in doesn't mean I have to go "I'm sorry, but your belief system is wrong, therefore I have to condemn it at all times".

Clearly, the majority of people just confuse "being an atheist" with "being an intolerant @rseh@le".

Well, if i do not believe in an invisible teapot, yet others celebrate the birth of said teapot-why would i join in? A lot of atheists do chase after other beliefs, and point out the 'illogical' nature of it all, yet, those same fundamental atheists are just as illogical and lack the courage of their convictions.

does dawkins celebrate christmas?

IAIN wrote:xmas exists because of religion.

It doesn't persist because of religion though. The fact that the religion it celebrates has changed over the years suggests that it has always been about the festival; the religion is, as you rightly say, an excuse. For atheists, it's a couple of bank holidays; for Christians it's a God baby. Even in the Victorian era Christmas wasn't about Christianity.

should all people who celebrate halloween be into witchcraft or is it all just a bit of harmless fun thesedays?

I mean...ghosts, goblins, bronze aged virgin births, giant bunny rabbits, tooth fairies

all utter fantasy but fun

The story is told differently, yet the plot is the same. christmas was initially pagan, then hijacked by a newer religion...

christmas as we know it is rooted in religion. there's no escaping that fact. therefore people who are atheist, and those that are against any form of religious belief should not celebrate it. you can't reframe it...it is what it is, even people who have no interest in religion will explain the term christmas as a celebration of god jnr being born.