Christmas is…a time to remember family and friends who are no longer with us. They stay with us in loving memory, and we celebrate how much richer our lives are because they were a part of us, shaping us, and making us better for knowing them….
Like many of my Christian friends, I am not overly fond of the commercialization of Christmas. I bristle at seeing decorations any time before Thanksgiving and this year I’ve been particularly annoyed with a car advert that has hijacked one of my favorite secular holiday songs. However, I let all that fall away and think about being with my family and spending time laughing, telling stories, and watching the joy of Christmas shine through the eyes of my niece Quincie.
Christmas belongs to anyone who wants it, and just because I gave up believing in a god doesn’t mean I gave up believing in the love and joy of family. I did not give up the joy of celebration with my abandonment of the absurd. So to my religious and non-religious friends, I wish them all a Merry Christmas or a Happy Hanukkah from the heart and I hope they take it with the true spirit with which I give it ”“ that of the spirt of humanity – something we can all celebrate.
I thought Jesus came to save us from the “spirit of humanity”.
I agree with her on only one thing: the commercialization of Christmas. We don’t need that, and she lost something somewhere along the way to becoming an atheist……and I hope she finds it again. It’s called faith.
FWLIW this claim is probably untrue. See [url=http://www.bib-arch.org/e-features/christmas.asp]here[/url] and [url=http://touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=16-10-012-v]here[/url].
Several atheists in our city put on a drive-by nativity scene. This year, its characters are space-aliens. “As plausible as the Jesus Story,” they explain. the Spirit of Humanity apparently can’t stand on its own.
I’ll give her credit for her goodwill towards those of us who do believe.
“Christmas belongs to anyone who wants it,…”
Well, to that extent, so does Festivus.
It is a property of many today to act as if things were as they desired, and not as they are. Indeed, such a property seems to inform much of what today passes as public policy today. To say that ‘Christmas means what I want it to mean’ reveals more than selfishness. It reveals a ready willingness to redefine things to suit one’s desires. She need not come to grips with, and positively reject, the reality of the religious holiday. Instead, she creates an over-riding sentiment and then tries to argue against commercialism based on her offended sentiment.
Of course, ironically, her sentiment is a weak basis for arguing against commercialism. Why on earth does not gather with her friends and family on Flag Day…
🙄
“Madame, you may celebrate, but you do not observe Christmas.”
I agree that Christmas belongs to anyone who wants it. There is this thing called free will. You can chose hell if you want to.
[blockquote]In pre-Christian Britain, the druids placed evergreens outside their door to symbolize the coming of spring. Christians adopted the symbolism so readily that they use palm leaves to celebrate the ‘triumph’ of Christ’s rise from the tomb at Easter, and then use those same palms as ashes to mark the cross on the forehead of Catholics throughout the world to signify the beginning of Lent the following year.[/blockquote]
Palm leaves on Easter? Derived from Druids rather than the Gospels’ stories of Palm Sunday? Don’t you just love it when people like Cornwell refer to Christian faith as “absurd,” “unreasonable,” and “unscientific,” and then don’t bother to do the most basic research in their rush to mutilate facts? (Driver8 points to the same thing in #3.)