NEWS FEATURE: At Christmas, what’s an atheist to do?

c. 1997 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Martin Blazevich, a 34-year-old computer programmer from Durham, N.C., can’t remember a time when he ever believed in God. So when he received an e-mail asking for his address so the company secretary could send him a Christmas card, he responded by saying he wasn’t a Christian _ […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Martin Blazevich, a 34-year-old computer programmer from Durham, N.C., can’t remember a time when he ever believed in God.

So when he received an e-mail asking for his address so the company secretary could send him a Christmas card, he responded by saying he wasn’t a Christian _ and left it at that. Next came a company-wide e-mail regarding the safe handling of Christmas trees that left him feeling frustrated.”How can I respond to that? I can’t say that that’s a meaningless symbol to me. A lot of assumptions are made, like `Where are you going for Christmas?’ I feel like saying, `Where are you going for the Chinese New Year!'” Despite his strong feelings, Blazevich is careful to keep his views to himself at work.”I don’t want my employer to know I’m an atheist,”he said.”It could be very detrimental. I share a cube with a guy who heads the Bible study group for the building, and if he found out I could get thrown out. So I tread lightly here.” Though he may feel alone on the job, Blazevich is among an estimated 26 million Americans who describe themselves as atheists, religious skeptics or freethinkers, according to American Atheists, an Austin, Texas-based group.


And _ like many Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and other non-Christians _ Christmas for non-believers often stirs feelings of social alienation. For despite its modern incarnation as a glittering winter festival of gift-giving and goodwill, Dec. 25 remains a holiday constructed upon centuries of deeply felt Christian beliefs.

To counter the prevailing Christmas ambiance, some atheists have taken to celebrating the winter solstice Dec. 21.

On Sunday, for instance, many atheists will host”ritual-free”solstice parties for fellow non-believers. Gathered around a tree decorated with symbols from nature, they will share food and drink with friends and celebrate the fact that the short, dark days of winter will be lengthening toward spring. Absent from their celebration will be any mention of the supernatural or religious.

Indeed, what makes the winter solstice _ as well as the year’s other solstices and equinoxes _ so appealing to atheists is its scientific basis in the natural order of life.”What you see in Christmas nowadays is the pagan manifestation of the solstice holiday,”said Ronald Barrier, spokesman for American Atheists.”It’s a natural, astronomical holiday, something that many ancient people celebrated regardless of their specific temples or gods.” Non-believers may think that they have discovered an appropriately”godless”holiday in the solstices and equinoxes. But modern-day pagans _ those who believe in nature’s divinity and whose pre-Christian rites celebrate the cycles of life and death _ see it somewhat differently.”To us, Mother Nature is God,”said pagan priestess Z. Budapest of Berkeley, Calif., one of the founders of the contemporary Goddess spirituality movement.”There is nothing above or below nature. It is an `is’ like the weather, with no beginning and no end _ that’s our divinity.” The author of the forthcoming”Summoning the Fates: A Woman’s Guide to Destiny”(Crown), Budapest said atheists who celebrate solstice holidays”are no longer atheists.”(By doing so) they have just revealed their genetic longings for the good old earth religions that are so engrained in our species that they will never be lost,”she said.

Is Budapest upset over what might be seen as the appropriation of a pagan holiday by atheists? Not at all.”I applaud it,”she said.”It’s just the same way the Christians appropriated the pagan holidays. To me it is a victory story _ Christians make most of their money from (what were originally) pagan holidays. Earth religions will rule. It doesn’t matter what religion you make up, it will fade because the winter solstice is real and the rest of it is not.” J. Gordon Melton, director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Santa Barbara, Calif., sees more pragmatic forces at work in American Atheists’ official embrace of the winter solstice.”Obviously, the irreligious have a problem,”he said.”It is a group built around a negative idea; they are not theists. Thus, many have been struggling to come up with a positive statement of what they do believe as opposed to what they don’t believe.” In addition, the lack of holidays _ or”holy days”_ can be especially problematic, Melton said, for an organization that eschews the veneration of saints or other religious figures.”Unless you’re going to take Robert G. Ingersoll’s birthday (a 19th-century atheist) as a holiday, you almost have to go with a natural seasonal turning point,”he said.

Blazevich, a member of American Atheists, said winter solstice celebrations are”just a response to the Christian and Jewish holidays so that people aren’t left out or perceived as atheists. … It doesn’t really speak to me.” There is no doubt that being an atheist in a culture Melton described as”the most religious country in the history of the world”can stir prejudices.

For one, there is the perception _ atheists would call it a misperception _ that someone who lacks religious faith also lacks values. In addition, there is often an unconscious link in people’s minds between atheism and”godless”communism _ a vestige of the Cold War, said Barrier, of Staten Island, N.Y.


Such prejudicial assumptions lead many atheists to keep their skepticism closeted from friends and family.

However, compassionate concern for others is a central atheistic concern, Barrier said.”We don’t have to show scriptures to each other in order to have morals and ethics,”he said.”If we would just show each other love and respect we would have heaven on earth. Then we could begin to get down to the business of making life better and helping people who need it.” The environmental crisis provides many atheists with a moral compass. “If you must pin something on me,”said Blazevich, who with his wife has made the decision not to have children because of over-population,”you could say my religion would be environmentalism. I don’t eat meat and I try not to use animal products.”My wife and I believe we’re stewards of the Earth _ so cutting a (Christmas) tree down and then throwing it in the trash would seem like a crime to us,”he said.

MJP END PEAY

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