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?

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…

ME: It’s a Jewish holiday.

BOY: What’s Jewish?

ME: It’s a kind of religion. Jewish people celebrate Hanukkah.

BOY: Are you Jewish?

ME: No. Are you?

BOY: No. I was born in Calgary.

ME: Oh! Well, Jewish people are born all over the world-

BOY: Even in Calgary?

ME: Yes. All over the world. But if you don’t celebrate Hanukkah, do you celebrate Christmas?

BOY: Yup!

ME: Then maybe you’re Christian.

BOY: What’s Christian?

ME: A kind of religion.

BOY: How do you know if you are one?

ME: Uhhh…well, do you go to a church?

BOY: No. [pause] I went to Bible camp, though.

ME: [lightbulb] Well, then. Did they talk about Jesus?

BOY: Yes! They talked about how he defeated the bad guys and he did all these things and he lived on earth and…there were these other guys and…

At that point his description tailed off. I felt confident concluding that since he went to a Bible camp that featured Jesus’ exploits, he’s probably not Jewish.

And then I thought, “Wow, this is what happens when people don’t think about their children’s religious awareness.”

And I imagined this conversation:

BOY’S MOM: Honey, I think we should send Boy to camp this summer.

BOY’S DAD: Sure. What kind of camp?

BOY’S MOM: I dunno. Soccer camp? Computer camp? Bible camp?

BOY’S DAD: Ummm…whatever’s cheapest.

BOY’S MOM: Perfect! Bible camp it is then.

And you know the Bible camps are dirt cheap, too. They’re like, $40 per week, versus upwards of $180 per week for a quality outdoor or sports or arts-related camp.

But what also struck me about the conversation was the little boy’s image of Jesus that he got from the Bible camp. It’s like Jesus-as-superhero rhetoric. Of course, I had to google “jesus superhero” and the stuff is literally everywhere. Obviously someone else thought of this motif before the local Bible camp. Check these out!

And, my personal favourite: Jesus as “easy button”.

Not being religious at all, I find this kind of stuff funny and yet sad. I mean, if you are going to expose your children to religious education, you should at least debrief them afterwards. Here’s a kid who went to Bible camp, but doesn’t know what a Christian is.

And for comparison’s sake, here are the answers of the seven-year-old child of an atheist:

ME: Do you know what Hanukkah is?

GIRL1: It’s a festival of lights. It’s a festival for Jewish people.

ME: Do you know what Christmas is?

GIRL1: It’s celebrating from when Jesus was born. It’s a festival for Christian people.

See? Awareness. Not blind indoctrination, just honest awareness.

And. And. AND!

The Bible camp in question, while obviously trying to appeal to the sensibilities of young boys with their doctrine of “jesus-as-superhero”, has done them all a disservice. If anybody needed a lesson in (what I believe to be) the most laudable lessons of Jesus — those being mercy, forgiveness, and (what a cool word) lovingkindness — it’s young boys! Setting Jesus up as some kind of archaic badass-kicking villain destroyer only creates more of the kind of people who see religion as a kind of easy button answer to all their problems.

Forget rational thought, treating other people well and solving your own problems. Press that easy button!

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.

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.

This is a woman whose daughter is in the same grade as mine. A woman who is roughly the same age as me. Not only does she think gay people can somehow choose not to be gay (I didn’t bother to ask her whether she’d tried being a lesbian lately, since it’s evidently so easy to morph back and forth) but she somehow thinks that a person would choose to be discriminated against, to put themselves at risk of being gay-bashed, to risk being rejected by family and friends … because … because … um, why, again?

Honestly, growing up, as I did, in a large city, I did not know a single, solitary soul who would have done anything other than laugh at the idea that sexuality is something you choose. I did, however, know a lot of kind, generous, honest, funny, intelligent, loving, witty, loyal and all-around great gay people. People whom I counted among my best friends. Some who cried on my shoulder while going through the agonizing process of coming to terms with their sexuality and then telling their families and friends. On their behalf, I am outraged that someone I know from my own experience to be an otherwise kind, generous, gentle and friendly person, should hold such an outrageous belief, and, AND! feel comfortable expressing it in public. To me, honestly, she might as well have used the word nigger to describe one of the black kids at school. It’s that outrageous.

So why does an otherwise intelligent, friendly, kind and generous woman believe this? Because she is a member of a fundamentalist Christian church, and this kind of baloney (among other things I will most assuredly address in other posts, like so-called “intelligent design” and “young earth” creationism) is preached from the pulpit every Sunday.

What upsets me the most is that after nine years of living here, I am still afraid to tell most people, until I’ve known them for, like, years, that I am not religious. That we are not a religious family. That we never go to church.

You see, my husband and I are athiests. We strongly believe that the best way to prepare our children for life is to

• encourage them to think for themselves,
• encourage them to seek out information about all religions,
• honestly answer their questions about life, death, ethics, conduct, etc. and then
• encourage them to make their own decisions.

I’m literally afraid to express these beliefs in public, and yet…if you’re Christian, you can say something as outrageous as “gay people can be cured” openly and without censure. In fact, you’re quite likely to find five people who will nod their heads in agreement!

And: you can wear things like this. In public.

What can I say? Please do click on it so you can experience the same sinking feeling in your stomach as I did when I saw it on a (different) fellow mom at my daughter’s school. It was frighteningly easy to find an image of this sartorial gem on the internet; in fact the first google hit I got was a success: Good News Clothing.

What if I wore this to the schoolyard?

You know, I am going to have to get me one of these. I found it here, just in case you want one too. I’ll have to work up the courage to wear it out in public, though, because somehow it’s perfectly socially acceptable to advertise your religion to the general public via a t-shirt, as long as that religion happens to be Christianity.

And if you want to challenge me on that, and get all “we’re so multicultural and we believe in religious tolerance” and whatever, then check out the story of Raed Jarrar, who was harassed by airline and security personnel prior to boarding a Jet Blue flight at New York’s JFK airport. The reason? He was wearing this t-shirt:

It sports the incredibly dangerous and inflammatory statement:

We will not be silent.

See the educated, well-spoken (and clearly un-terrorist-like) Jarrar interviewed on YouTube.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7ww13jYo6Y&rel=1]

You can also read Jarrar’s story here.

And before you try to say, “well, that’s in the States. That would never happen in Canada”, I ask you to remember Maher Arar and to consider that bill C-36 (which passed in 2001) allows for racial profiling right here in Canada, as well as the ability of our government to arrest and hold without charges individuals deemed to pose a threat to national security (through the use of “security certificates”). Yup, we’ve got our own Canadian Guantanamo Bay going on, folks. Don’t believe me? Check out this story. At least the Supreme Court, in a 9-0 decision, ruled that the use of security certificates in the cases of two of “The Secret Trial Five” (who have since been released from prison) was unconstitutional.

Funny, I remember learning about the great victory of the writ of habeas corpus in the Magna Carta. (And in case you’re not a history geek like me, habeas corpus essentially refers to your legal guarantee that you cannot be detained without having formal charges laid against you) Ooops! Was that the baby we just threw out with the bath water? Oh well. Whatever. At least we’re secure now.

BUT! To get back to my point above…what IF I were to wear that t-shirt to school to pick up my daughter? Here in Calgary, in the heart of Canada’s bible belt, I can guarantee you I wouldn’t get a warm reception.

But hey…knowing me, I might just have to try it out.

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…

HOWEVER. Back to my argument. It stuns me — truly stuns me — that there are people in the 21st century, who will, in all earnestness, say things like:

While I do believe there is a place for higher education in the preparation of our daughters, our focus should be to encourage them to see the eternal value in embracing their unique role as wife, mother, and keeper at home—the normative role for women, found in Scripture. [emphasis mine]

Uh…sorry? “…there is a place for higher education in the preparation of our daughters…” Damn right there is, Pastor McDonald. In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a very large place for higher education for young women. In fact, in Canada (my home and native land) there are, according to Maclean’s Magazine “nearly three women to every two men on campus”, and a pretty much identical ratio exists in the US, as well. This trend has less to do with either mine or Pastor McDonald’s argument, though, and is likely more a reflection that the educational systems in our countries are largely failing boys.

What gets me more than anything about the Pastor’s statement, though, is its insincere generosity. I feel like I should respond with a syrupy and sarcastic:

Well, golly-gee Pastor McDonald! Thanks for letting me consider a higher education! But only insofar as it will further my normative scriptural vocation to be the keeper of the family under the headship of my husband, of course! It’s so much more than I could have hoped for.

BARF.

Okay, I know it’s representative of a reactionary swing of the pendulum in a society that spawned political correctness, alternative spellings like womyn and so on, but it actually frightens me that people who use the word patriarchy as a goal rather than a condemnation can wield so much influence and power in our world.

In a world without patriarchy, women are free to choose their own paths, to reach their fullest potential and to influence those around them in a positive way. In a world without patriarchy, women can make a greater contribution to their families, communities and the entire world, because they are free to choose their own paths.

Indeed, many mothers choose to stay home and take care of their children, husbands and homes, and it is their right to do so. Many mothers choose to stay home and also work from home. I am among this number. Yet others choose to contribute to their families’ well-being by working outside the home, and it should remain their right to do so.

Unfortunately, what Pastor McDonald doesn’t seem to understand is that many women are forced to choose one of these paths because of circumstances outside their belief systems. I know many women who would prefer to be at home full-time, but are forced to work in order to help put food on the table and keep a roof over their family’s home. I know, on the other hand, some women who are dying to work outside the home, but feel pressured not to by husbands or other family members. What you need to see is that both are equally unhappy.

I think it’s also important for Pastor McDonald to wake up to the reality of the institution of marriage in his America. According to the Barna Group (an evangelical Christian research organization) the divorce rate among evangelical Christians is 34% in contrast with 21% for atheists, agnostics and Roman Catholics (I guess Catholics don’t count as Christians, LOL! Shhh…don’t tell my Catholic friends!)

I worry deeply about sending young women off to marriages that have such a high rate of failure without providing them the means to support themselves (and their future children). Without a higher education and some kind of a career, the only option for the 34% of evangelical Christian women who will end up divorcing is remarriage. And interestingly, the same Barna survey cited above found that 24% of evangelical Christians had divorced more than once in their lifetimes! I surmise that it is at least in part the prevalence of patriarchy as a world view in this community that leads to such a high rate of divorce. The sisters are getting sick of living “under the headship” of their husbands! You GO girls! Preferably as far away as possible.

If you’re looking for a good, straightforward endorsement of the rejection of patriarchy, check out Sally Field’s acceptane speech (which was censored by FOX), which basically says it all:

If mothers ruled the world, there’d be no more goddamn war!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImoMGyJjWIk&rel=1]