By Elaine Carlson
Once back in December 1992 or January 1993 I was out running errands when I ran into a man I knew. We lived near each other and because we both had to leave for work at the same time, we ended up doing a lot of talking while we waited at the same bus stop. This time he was out with his wife. He introduced us and said I didn't celebrate Christmas (quite a way to introduce an acquaintance).
We lived in Oakland California. Not long before then I saw him when I had been racing to go out of town to attend a meeting of the "Atheists and Agnostics of Sacramento." The speaker was going to be the author Tom Flynn discussing his book "The Trouble With Christmas."
Flynn is an editor of "Free Inquiry," a newspaper put out by the "Council for Secular Humanism." That organization is composed of, and attempts to represent, a loose collection of non-believers.
He sold a lot of copies of his book and I bought one. I remember after I gave him a ten-dollar bill, he gave me the book and a quarter. I guess before going to book events he had to make sure he went to a bank to get a roll of quarters (or more than one roll) because the price of the book was set at $9.75.
It can be a lot of fun to read "The Trouble With Christmas" and learn how our modern holiday was made. Christmas is a big mess (the technical word is conglomerate) with a lot of different parts. The major Christmas "miracle" is probably that all of those distinct bits and pieces melded together.
Christmas went from being a mainly religious to both a religious and a non-religious holiday a long time before 1862 when the cartoonist Thomas Nast drew his first picture of Santa Claus. And even began before the 1400s when some Germans thought the holiday could be so much nicer if people would cut down trees and bring them into their houses where they could decorate them.
In 1841 Queen Victoria introduced Christmas Trees to England when she ordered one brought into the living room of her castle to please her German husband Prince Albert. Christmas cards came out about then. In 1823 Clement Moore anonymously published "A Visit From Saint Nicholas" and in 1939 the story of "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer" was released (the song not until 1949).
Actually, when I saw that guy I knew from the bus stop and met his wife it wasn't true that I didn't celebrate Christmas. I never go out for a massive blowout but I always do something special for that holiday.
For the last fourteen or fifteen years my husband Brad and I have always gone out for our Christmas dinner. It can really be nice way to celebrate to be in a fine restaurant with pleasant waiters who try so hard to please. Almost every year we have gone out on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
This year we won't go out (of course) but will have pizzas. And every year we drive around town to see Christmas lights and decorations.
Although Flynn wasn't successful in persuading me to give up on Christmas, I appreciate his book. I may celebrate but I also have serious reservations about Christmas. Often it is hard to separate the holiday from materialism. Do a lot of people really have to go out and spends tons of money just so we can keep the economy afloat? Do we really think a good way to get people to like (love) us is to buy them presents?
I suspect Flynn wasn't any more successful in getting many freethinkers to decide to go without Christmas. Since 1989 I have joined and participated in seven freethought organizations. All of them have a party in December – usually referred to as a Winter Solstice Party.
Non-believers share many of the concerns of the people in non-Christian religions. Is it fair to criticize them for wanting to enjoy the non-religious parts of the Christmas celebrations?
A lot of people celebrate Christmas without embarrassment – nominal and pious Christians, non-believers of all sorts (Atheists and Agnostics and Humanists are just a few of them names they call themselves) as well as Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Unitarians, Pagans and Muslims (just some of the non-Christian faiths).