For billions of Christians around the world, Christmas honors the birth of their savior, Jesus Christ, who lived to die to purge humanity of original sin in the ultimate sacrifice, but what if you believe in none of that? Why is a holiday to honor what you don’t accept still so important?
For billions of Christians around the world, Christmas honors the birth of their savior, Jesus Christ, who lived to die to purge humanity of original sin in the ultimate sacrifice. At least some Christians have become frustrated in recent years as the holiday has become increasingly non denominational and consumerist, arguing that we need to “put Christ back into Christmas.” As an example, Good Shepherd Orthodox Church’s Father Geoff Harvey provided ten ways to do just that, including committing to a “season of spiritual sensitivity,” making it a “season of prayer,” give “to those who can’t give back,” see “the Image of the Father,” contemplate “the Mystery of the Incarnation,” know that “Jesus is the Light of the world,” look “to Jesus as the ultimate revelation of God’s glory,” join “the Spiritual Celebration,” fasting before Christmas and then feasting on Christmas. While I don’t believe his intention was to be exclusionary, there’s not much here for the agnostic, much less the atheist, and yet tens of millions of Americans either skeptical of organized religion or, like myself, who do not believe in a higher power of any kind, representing about ten percent of the population, celebrate the holiday regardless, the same or close to the same as any true believer, at least in terms of traditions and customs rather than purely religious trappings. Should we and why? To answer, I could point out that the Winter Solstice has been celebrated long before anyone really called it Christmas, even going so far as to accuse Christians of hijacking a good, old fashioned pagan holiday. In the Middle Ages, somewhere between 400 and 1500 AD, a peasant or minor religious officer would be appointed the Lord of Misrule to preside over the Feast of Fools, a revelry that usually included drunkenness and other assorted debauchery that would not be approved by any church. The custom was so popular the role was referred to as the Abbot of Unreason in Scotland and the Prince des Sots in France while the Church of England had a spin on it as well. In the early days of Christianity’s spread throughout Europe, leaders of the new religion sensibly co-opted the existing winter solstice festivals to increase the likelihood Christmas was broadly celebrated. The result was an odd blending of traditions right from the start, usually involving a trip to church followed by a wild party. Complaints about commercialism and other concerns also started early and often. On January 1, 400, the bishop Asterius of Amasea, in modern day Turkey warned, “This festival teaches even the little children, artless and simple, to be greedy, and accustoms them to go from house to house and to offer novel gifts, fruits covered with silver tinsel. For these they receive, in return, gifts double their value, and thus the tender minds of the young begin to be impressed with that which is commercial and sordid.”
At the same time, the historical perspective has its limits and we can only look to the past for so much guidance on the future. There are plenty of holidays, both secular and religious, that we no longer celebrate for various reasons. “Plough Monday,” for example, was an English holiday on the first Monday after January 6th to celebrate the start of the farming season. A boy would dress as an old woman, Bessy, and a man would dress as an animal, the Fool. Together, they would rove about the town accompanied by musicians, dragging a plough from house to house asking for money, usually followed by a party with dancing, the thankfully lost art of sword-dancing, and a lot of drinking. The tradition died out in the 1800s. St. Clements Day or Old Clem’s Night might have lasted a little longer, into the early 20th century, but it too was doomed to be forgotten. On November 23, however, people used to celebrate Pope Clement I, the patron saint of blacksmiths. The festivities began with the ritual firing of the forge and what amounted to an early fireworks display by pounding gunpowder on the anvils. The blacksmiths themselves would wear costumes, dressing up as Old Clem himself and knocking on doors begging for beer, fruit, nuts, or money. If anything, Lughnasadh is perhaps even more interesting, an ancient Celtic holiday celebrated on June 1. Somewhat bizarrely, it was a wedding day of sorts. Couples would join hands through a hole in a wooden door for the ceremony, but they were only bound for a year and a day. The newlyweds could split up the following Lughnasadh and presumably start over again with another more to their liking, like leasing a car rather than buying it outright. Imbolc was another old Celtic holiday to mark the beginning of spring on February 1, what has been described as the Celts’ version of Groundhog Day, and they put their own inimitable spin on it. Cailleach, a divine hag, gathered firewood and, if it was bright and sunny, she was said to gather a lot for a long cold winter, but if the weather was bad, she gathered less and winter would be that much shorter. Gŵyl Mabsant was also celebrated in the British Isles, this time in Wales to honor a local parish saint. There were no weddings, but we can imagine a rather bizarre scene between blindfolded wheelbarrow-driving, a game similar to squash called “fives” game played against the church walls, and “old women’s grinning matches,” the meaning of which is unclear. Slightly more normal, there was also soccer, a field hockey game known as bando, and cockfighting. Fortunately or unfortunately, religious leaders shut it down around 1800 for being far too rowdy for their liking. In the late 19th century, tin workers in Cornwall meanwhile celebrated Paul Pitcher Day on the eve of St. Paul’s Day, January 23. They were nominally honoring the discovery of smelting, but were mostly protesting rules prohibiting alcohol at work, public drunkenness not yet considered a socially unsound development. Tinners set up water pitchers and knocked them down with stones. Then, they took the broken pitchers and threw them into people’s houses, screaming, “Paul’s Eve, and here’s a heave!” Oddly, the first heave was “free” and the homeowner couldn’t object or prosecute a revenge of any kind, but should there come a second or a third, there could be “just punishment” for the heaver.
I could go on, but obviously holidays, however special at a certain time and place, come and go, yet Christmas remains more than even a simple holiday. For believers and non-believers, an occurrence to honor the birth of Christ has been extended into an entire season, beginning with Thanksgiving and stretching through New Year’s Day, making for a full month of hopeful merriment. Further, this season has been imparted with its own special spirit, the idea that we should aspire to be our best, most giving, most generous, most charitable, most compassionate, most understanding, most loving, most caring, most ideal form of ourselves. Consumerism aside, this spirit manifests in public, on full display. The day after Thanksgiving, my lovely wife and I ventured into New York City to see King Lear in Hudson Yards featuring Kenneth Branagh, one of my childhood heroes as a lifelong geek. Despite the sudden turn in the weather to a more seasonable cold and the wind blowing right off the nearby Hudson River, the city was alive, lit up both by the displays and the people themselves. The open spaces were packed with pedestrians, couples, families, men, women, and children, all coming and going, some heading inside and outside the restaurants and malls, others gathered around street vendors in the frigid air, bundled up, but clearly enjoying themselves. The scene, or something similar, was undoubtedly repeated at Times Square and the other popular gathering places in New York, and across the entire country from the smallest towns who still find the time and resources for a community Christmas tree to the most bustling metropolises. People, generally speaking, have a craving for community. To come together even with total strangers, to be surrounded by family, friends, and people you do not know nor will never know. Most of us delight in the murmur of crowds, the background energy of knowing we are not alone, that we are a part of something greater than ourselves, that others have the same interests, the same inclinations, the same desires, something of the same beliefs. We also have a near pathological need to mark the passage of time. Even knowing that the universe doesn’t care when we chose to end a year and to start another one, what arbitrary label we put on major milestones, from international holidays to our own birthdays, we must do so ourselves, pointing to this day, this period, this season as important above others, to both honor the day and our little role in our lives, our families, our communities. Looking backwards, forwards, and hopefully pausing however briefly to enjoy the magic of the moment itself.
Christmas, perhaps, represents the greatest example of this, a world coming together at the turning of the seasons and time itself. Ironically and yet rightly somehow, it occurs amid the shortest days of the year, the darkest and some of the coldest, as though part of the purpose was so that the human spirit shines even more brightly and more warmly against impossible conditions. Some, of course, wonder why that same spirit only seems to appear one month out of twelve, if not one day out of 365, suggesting that somehow we might be our best selves throughout the entire year. Sadly, the human mind and body simply doesn’t appear to be capable of such a thing, bound by something of a Newton’s Third Law for emotions, where actions have equal and opposite reactions. As social creatures, we navigate interactions with others by wearing many different masks; one for work, one for play, one for friends, one for family, one for our significant other, and perhaps one we only show to ourselves. For most of us, these masks are fashioned at least in part by suppressing conscious or unconscious impulses that remain the same in all situations. Putting this another way, our brains do not change much based on where we are and who we are interacting with, our conscious experience is always on, our minds are ever churning, but what of that inner storm we choose to share, either verbally or through our body language and actions, varies substantially based on the context. Thus, a thought might pop into our head at work that we would never say to a coworker, but might to friends or family, or we might react differently under different circumstances, hiding our anger or fear from colleagues while sharing it privately. Though society wouldn’t be able to function if the great majority of us didn’t perform these various suppressions instinctively and automatically, being honed by evolution into an organism acutely attuned to the attitudes of others, the process isn’t free. Expressive suppression, for example, is defined as maintaining control of our faces whatever we may feel inside. Studies have found that there is some impact on the underlying emotion from this effort, but “there is little evidence that the suppression of spontaneous emotional expression leads to a decrease in emotional experience and physiological arousal.” “In everyday life, suppression may serve to conform individuals’ outward appearance to emotional norms in a given situation, and to facilitate social interaction” both according to Psychology of emotion: Interpersonal, experiential, and cognitive approaches published in 2006, meaning what we hide ultimately comes out one way or another.
However you choose to define it, being on our best behavior isn’t easy and it comes with a cost. There’s a reason you so desperately want that glass of wine after a long day at work. There’s a reason why the Christmas spirit is the Christmas spirit and not the universal spirit, but in my mind at least, that only makes it more special and necessary. Rather than wonder why we can’t be our best selves all the time, cherish the fact that we, both believers and non-believers, have a season devoted to it, reminding ourselves who we can be at the best of times. The spirit of Christmas is real and it is necessary, even if it only comes around once per year.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 