The holidays can be rough for closeted atheist folks who are surrounded by theists. This link provides some handy advice from Godless Mom.
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My family have known that Iâm an atheist for decades, and that thatâs the reason I donât participate in their x-mas celebrations. After today, Thanksgiving, itâs my least favorite time of the year, and canât wait for it to be over with.
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Have you anything useful to add to help folks who might be struggling right now?
I donât have much of a problem with holidays, as thereâs nothing wrong with celebrating family togetherness, universal love, kindness, and charity.
I have no problem celebrating these things, also having fun, eating . . . this is all common ground with religious people.
Religion doesnât have to get in the way.
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Thatâs pretty much how I see it, time off work spent with family, eating, drinking and being happy, whatâs not to like.
My nephew and his girlfriend are bring their new baby over as well, I havenât seen her yet.
Exactly, it doesnât for me. Some of the family are theists, and others are not. It doesnât really come up tbh.
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I am newly atheist and my in laws are deeply religious. No one knows my doubts but my husband. But I let them have their prayers before meals and they can talk about religion if they want. I just stay quiet and otherwise much enjoy the company, food and togetherness. I just ignore their bible based stuff.
My father is only nominally religious and my siblings arenât at all so that makes it easy on my side of the family.
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My main problems with christmas can be summed up as:
- the extreme commercialisation and ultra-consumerism
- the expectation that people get together and celebrate in a certain way. If you donât, you are âweirdâ
- youâre expected to enjoy whatever festivities and celebrational norms the collective society throw at you
- Tradition trumps individuality: although the religious meaning of christmas has been thoroughly watered out over the years where I live, there is still the christian fariy tale as the basis of it all, and if you protest against it, you are âweirdâ. Even here.
- the kids have been conditioned by society to accept christmas as the festive culmination of the entire year, so as to not be âcruelâ to them, I am forced to conform.
Like others here, I certainly do not mind a few days off from work and to spend time with my family to enjoy good food and drinks, and to have a bit of fun. But the total framework of christmas (especially the extreme commercialisation) makes me dislike this season. Over the years, I have come to dislike christmas earlier and earlier in the autumn, starting when the shops start to sell shitty christmas decorations.
Bah, humbug!
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Interesting but not something I can really relate to. Outside of school (Catholic) and my late father, who died in the mid-80s, no one has given me a hard time about being an atheist. Outside of the odd t-shirt and my inverted cross, I donât throw it in peopleâs faces and only get âangstyâ when someone has a go and I canât remember the last time that happened⌠even the flat Earther we met didnât have a go about my lack of faith.
I think the UK (and Europe) is a lot more laid back than a lot of Americans in this respect.
UK Atheist
Iâm glad you canât relate to the Godless Mom advice! It means things are improving in some places for folks who donât have any gods.
I think youâre right about a lot of areas in the U.S. There are also many other countries in which atheists are persona non grata. Providing folks in tough situations with helpful hints on getting through them sure can be beneficial until those places catch up with the more civilized ones.
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Iâm certainly not closeted. I am writing a book that refutes the apologetics theists use and serializes the chapters on Medium. I post a notice and link to each new chapter when it is published. But I respond politely to Christians if they wish me a merry Christmas. Iâll openly explain that I am not a believer if they try to expound on Jesus being the reason for the season. The truth is Christians adopted the Yule celebrations of Europe.
Couple that with obligatory generosity and the same very few songs playing everywhere (at least here in the States) and youâve got my reasons for being a Christmas stick in the mud.
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Most of the people around you are as religious as you are, they talk the talk but donât walk the walk. Just nod and smile when the dead Jewâs birthday comes up.
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My advice is: Donât let your beliefs separate you from friends and family.
Participate.
Christmas is far more a pagan/atheists holy day than it is Christian. Christianity was, from the beginning, mixed with paganism for the purpose of unifying the Roman empire. If Jesus had his way Christians would go to church on the sabbath (Saturday) as was his custom. But they go on Sunday (most) because their religion was constructed to bridge the gaps between religions and secular society. And clearly, the Empire didnât think it was a big deal to merge all of this stuff because they didnât take religion as seriously as many take it today. That too is something we need to learn from.
If you take it too seriously, you will isolate yourself from believers in a way that doesnât help anyone or anything. If they want to pray over their food, fine. Treat like a kid with an imaginary friend. Do you absolutely have to shut it down? Are you going to shut down the imaginary friendships of millions of children? Are you going to crusade against them or refuse to parent children who have imaginary friends? Of course not. So treat it like that. When believers see you participating to the level that you can, then you will seem less alien to them. You will seem less of an extremist to them. They process your lack of participation as you being extreme, not as you standing your ground against their beliefs. So no matter how you think about what youâre doing, try to consider it from their perspective. And donât be a Grinch. Buy gifts. Do whatever.
Most of that stuff has nothing to do with Jesus anyway.
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Oh, and stay away from my hillbilly cousinsâ homes on Xmas Day. Some of them get shot every year by relatives playing with their new toys in the living room.
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Tell me about it, LOL.
I was a paramedic in South Florida for almost 12 years . . . and there is no intelligence test mandated for gun ownership.
In my book Field Notes of an Autistic Paramedic, I have a whole chapter devoted to nothing more than the intersection of stupidity and gun ownership.
In one instance (not in my book), a man was using an AK-47 to try and shoot a rat in his kitchen.
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When I reported to my boat squadron, January 14th, 1970, I was shown to a room where a corpsman was sitting at the front behind the desk. He looks at the new arrivals (guys I trained with in Georgia) and said âDo any of you like SciFi?â Most of the guys didnât know what SciFi was. I raised my hand.
âYou afraid of big words?â
âI have a formidable lexicon.â
âYouâre my understudy. Come with me.â
As we left the room HM3 Ho looked at a CPO and said, âGot mine, heaven help you with the rest.â
So, I was to back up the corpsman, replace him if he was killed.
Easiest volunteering I ever did.
My issue with ChristmasâŚput forth as real when none of it is. I might participate if my family acknowledged the fact.
I would argue that if they have issues acknowledging facts around Christmas, it is because they donât care about these facts like we probably think they should if they are basing their lives on these beliefs. But every Christian I talk to typically cherry-picks the things that make them feel good. They âuseâ the religion just like the religion uses them back. And what do they get from it? Truth? No. They get validation. They get community. These are things people pay for. So⌠a few days a year⌠let them have it. Let them have their validation and community. If you combat them during these times itâs not going to make them think youâre being reasonable and if they donât perceive you that way then nothing you say will change their minds. Credibility is hugely important if you want the facts to matter. Feelings have to matter too. If we donât take into consideration how they feel then theyâre not going to take into consideration what we think or what we know. Christmas, for 99% of Christians isnât about biblical truth. Itâs not. Itâs about family and gifts and lights and love. They donât care about the pagan origins of the Christmas tree. Thatâs not what itâs about for them. So I promise you. It will be okay. There may be other opportunities to have conversations on the validity of their religious beliefs, but donât let Christmas or Easter (pagan holy days) be one of them. And donât hurt your relationships with your friends and family because you have theological differences. Isolation doesnât help the atheist position. It hurts it. Christians need to see how you behave and that your lifestyle is good and not really different. They need to see that so that their ignorance about atheism doesnât allow them to think the worst. Easy to do that when you donât know or see the person.
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My hillbilly cousins are snake handlers and faith healers. If a snake kills someone itâs âgodâs willâ, if the cancer doesnât spontaneous remit itâs âgodâs willâ. Iâm not seeing those crackers changing in the next thousand or so years.
YMMV
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snake handling is nuts but the reason they do it is because it provides a physical thing that they can put their weak faith into. It allows them to pretend their faith is strong but the fact that they have to âdo somethingâ allows them to hide their weak faith behind a public display. And that reinforces a âsuperiorityâ complex that will be hard for them to give up⌠(especially if they live in the deep South)
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