I’ll admit it…Christmas has been getting on my conscience lately. See, back in the day when I considered myself agnostic — before I realized that I was actually not agnostic but an atheist — I felt okay celebrating Christian holidays, including Christmas. I guess I thought (if I thought about it at all) that I was carrying on family traditions, that said holidays had become secularized anyway, and I guess that if there was a remote possibility of there being a god, then celebrating a religious holiday in a similarly remote way was no big deal.

But now things are different. Now I have kids. And kids ask questions. And even if they don’t ask questions, they hear things and repeat things and absorb things. And their Dad and I like to be aware of what they’re hearing and absorbing. We like to talk about it with them. To help them process it, so they can make their own decisions.

And yesterday, our youngest told us, repeatedly, that “Christmas is Jesus’ birthday”. Which is true. I wouldn’t deny it. And I don’t ever have a hard time explaining to my children that Jesus was a person who probably lived, and had some really good things to say about how to live a good life; as did a bunch of other wise people who you should also learn about. And some people believe Jesus was the son of a god, and also the same as a god, but Dad and I don’t believe that. But we want you to ask questions and learn as much as you can so you can make your own decisions about what you believe.

It’s cool. I can do that. I feel good about it. But what I feel all niggly about is actually celebrating Christmas.

It’s because I have this thing about integrity. See, I prefer to have it and more importantly, to model it for my children. Now I’m not so high-horsey that I don’t realize I slip on this one all the time. I sometimes throw plastics in the garbage if I can’t be bothered to rinse them out and carry them down to the recycling box. I use Kleenex instead of handkerchiefs, I drive my car instead of walking when it’s really cold outside.

I know it: I AM FAR FROM PERFECT.

But still. I try. Which, I suspect, is a lot more than many. And that makes me feel a little uncomfortable at this time of year. Verging on hypocritical, actually. Because I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe Jesus (if he existed at all) was divine. I can’t in all honestly call myself Christian. So why celebrate Christmas?

I think about it a lot, and the best I can come up with is this: Christmas has already become very secularized. If it hadn’t, fundamentalist Christians wouldn’t feel the need for slogans like “Jesus is the reason for the season” or “put the Christ back in Christmas”. So, lil’ ol’ me celebrating it in a secular ho, ho, ho Santa-and-family-and-giving-presents kind of way isn’t doing anything that wasn’t already done.

In addition, it is at its core a midwinter festival; a celebration of the winter solstice. Rejoicing that the days have stopped getting shorter, things are turning around, the winter will end and spring will come. The cycle of life turns on and the time of renewal is at hand. Christians over the millennia have simply layered their own nativity myth as a veneer on top of an ages-old pagan festival.

So, from here and for now, it’s family and cultural tradition, secular Santa Claus and a solstice party.

How do you holiday?

I had a conversation with one of Girl1’s friends this afternoon. It went like this:

BOY: Tomorrow’s Hanukkah

ME: I think you’re right.

BOY: Do you celebrate Hanukkah?

ME: No. Do you?

BOY: What’s Hanukkah?

Umm…I’m thinkin’ the answer to my question is no, then… Read the rest of this entry »

Karl Marx said that “religion is the opium of the people”, and I used to be inclined to agree with him. Today, though, I think we need to edit his phrase to read:

professional sports is the opium of the people.

I can’t claim credit for the idea. I first heard Noam Chomsky say something similar in an interview. But I think he’s got the right idea. You know, keep them too busy working their butts off at underpaid jobs, then give them a Gladiator show in the Forum on the weekend, and you keep the plebs satisfied and too busy to think about politics. Oh wait, did I say Gladiator show in the Forum? I meant football game at the stadium. Sorry. Wrong empire.

It hit me again full-force last Monday morning as I listened to the news. When the sports news came on, the lead story was, of course, the Grey Cup. Lots of crazy cheering Roughriders fans, and two grown men from Winnipeg, weeping because their team lost.

Weeping!

Because a team (that they don’t play for, coach, or manage, incidentally) lost a game. A game! Grown men weeping!

And then I wondered, how many of these people voted in the last election? Well, thanks to the marvel of the internet, I can tell you. Check out these numbers:

52,230 people attended the Grey Cup game in Toronto. Many of them traveled from Winnipeg (or other parts of Manitoba) and Saskatchewan to be there.

And of 450,000 registered voters in Winnipeg, 90,000 voted 2005 civic election. That’s not even double the number of people at the (just about sold out) Grey Cup game. It is also, sickeningly, only twenty percent voter turnout.

And that’s what’s wrong with our country.

Here’s where I jump off the edge and right into the deep end. Maybe I should have built up my readership first, before delving into religion and politics all in one shot, but you know, it’s more like the real me to lay it all out there and — discretion be damned — I’m gonna say what I think whether you like me or not afterwards. To thine own self be true, and all that, right? (Nod to Polonius, wisest of fathers.)

Probably I need to mellow out, grow up or mature (or quite possibly all three!) but, anyway, here goes.

Get this: there are people out there in the world, real people, living in our neighbourhoods (well, mine anyway), under the age of one-hundred-and-seven, who believe that you can choose your sexuality. To wit: earlier this autumn, a fellow mom in the schoolyard said this to me:

I truly believe gay people choose to be gay and they can be cured.

Oh, sorry. I had a momentary black-out there. It might have been a mini-stroke. Or perhaps just utter, mind-numbing incredulity. Read the rest of this entry »

If you haven’t, you can go ahead and read Can You Believe? Part One here.

So yesterday I addressed the missing link argument in Searching for the Missing “Pink” Link on Family Reformation. (As in my first post, as well, I’ll point out that all quotations of Pastor McDonald below are from the post linked here so I won’t link to them again.)

Now…let’s move on to this “pink” link of Pastor McDonald’s. He doesn’t specifically define the term, rather he cites examples of “the alleged poster women for an alternative career path” and “that ever-missing link” sought by “evangelical feminists”. By this I can only presume he means evangelical Christians who are also feminists, and not feminists who are evangelical about their feminism; these could be — and no doubt are — from all and no faiths.

I’m not going to argue with McDonald on the basis of his Biblical examples. You see, I’m an atheist, so I don’t see the Bible as the received word of god, but rather as a piece of literature (and one full of contradictions at that). I have read it – cover to cover, actually – but I don’t see it as a valid source of ethical, moral or other guidance. Therefore I cannot enter the argument on those grounds. Those who see the Bible differently may be swayed one way or the other by quotations of biblical verse, but to me, you might as well quote the Egyptian Book of the Dead, or the Niebelungenlied or John Lennon. Actually, I think more people should quote John Lennon. Now that’s something that would make the world a better place… Read the rest of this entry »