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Hell you also can't take the Saturnalia out of Christmas. It would still be a religious holiday because of that connection even if you stripped the Christ and returned it to Saturn.

They basically killed the entire concept of holidays around where I'm at. It just feels like another day. Which I feel is the plan, honestly.

You're so right. Christians totally invented having a light and food filled celebration in winter - just like they invented marriage. No one ever decorated a tree, feasted or had light festivals before Christianity came along. /s

poignant that it coincides with Hanukkah, a holiday that celebrates not lying over and conforming, accepting others' realities as the norm

Grandfather Frost and the Snow Maiden thank you for your service, comrade.

I can't compare "speed of change", but Chanukah has changed quite a bit (in the US at least) because of its proximity to Christmas. It used to be a rather minor holiday and had nothing to do with gift giving.

although if you say that’s part of establishing christianity as the “default,” i guess i’d agree.

We love a good cultural hegemony, don't we

It pisses me off how much people get genuinely angry at me when I say I don’t celebrate Christmas. People genuinely act like celebrating it is the only way to experience joy. I’m fucking fine without it, like holy shit, keep your holiday, have fun, I’m literally just vibing

Your takes continue to not miss

I think no one would claim ‘Christmas is solely a secular holiday’ but American culture has definitely made it more secular. A tomato is botanically a fruit, but sometimes the masses ignore the facts and say: no, it’s a vegetable. And inso doing create a second truth that doesn’t negate the other.

I can definitely relate... The number of times, as an elementary school student, i was asked to speak as a representative of my whole ass ethnicity 🤦🤦🤦

Ironically, I think this stems from the prevailing belief that there is no such thing as a secular Christian. A belief that even some secularists have bought into.

Looks like it's Arbor Day's time to shine.

Just because I as an atheist celebrate Xmas in a secular way does not mean that it’s universally a secular holiday. I

It weirds me out when I hear the "it has been secularised" thing. No, some of its "traditions" have expanded through capitalism, but it is still a christian holiday, and it's very weird to push it isn't. Christianity is not homogeneous, much less the standard.

Ah it just clicked for me actually that is the difference between saying “It’s a secular holiday” and “I celebrate it secularly”. Yeah the first one is straight up a lie.

Modern Christmas is multiple different cultures' originally-non-Christian winter holiday traditions stuffed together in a blender, but it's still Christian because the blender was there to get people to go along with it in the first place.

Are familiar with the history of Christmas as a holiday? Serious question.

By whom? Cite your sources. Because it was Constantine the Great that decriminalized and established Christianity as the primary Roman religion and started bringing the Germanic tribes into the fold by adopting their festivals and "christianizing" them as holidays.

If somebody asks me if I celebrate christmas I would answer I celebrate the winter equinox.

I would describe it more as a cultural holiday. You don’t have to be Christian to celebrate but it is something celebrated by people raised in a Christian culture.

I think that's an argument one can make in a more culturally Christian country, but there are also many non-Christian countries that celebrate it in a way that's completely divorced from its Christian roots

People get so upset and confused when I tell them I don't celebrate christmas because I'm not a christian. It sucks!

i mean, practically speaking the christmas we celebrate now is like an 1800s/early 1900s tradition. and if you go further back here in the nordics, the tradition itself predates christianity. we still call it "jul", an old germanic name.

Christians stole the Yuletide from the pagans and kept its traditions. They even celebrate the birth of Christ on a day they know full well he wasn’t born on just for that awesome present exchange and tree decorating. Merry Christmas!

well, christmas is heavily derived from winter solstice festivals, yeah, but the religious aspects are certainly christian. and halloween is afaik separate from samhain in its origin. although, yeah, a lot of its traditions blended in.

Similarly, nobody would say "happy holidays!" over spring break, which is what Christmas is like for non-religious people. Like just tell your coworker to enjoy their vacaction if you don't wanna say Merry Christmas or are unsure about what they celebrate.

Secular Chanukah sounds like just a really boring set of Bayblade matches with new candle lighting action. I heard Moses even used one of those bad boys to part the Red Sea.

I'm actually not sure you would- a significant portion of people insist they are "Culturally Jewish" without being at all religious. For me at least, these seem like related ideas.

tbf christians put christ into a pagean tradition don't see why we can't yeet him out.

It's absolutely Christian and I did use that fact as an excuse not to attend a party, however I do enjoy the aesthetic which *is* secular, the gift giving which is also secular and I do appreciate getting a day off work. Like Americans celebrating Columbus day despite him being a vile monster.

fun time, but i completely get why people dont like it. and as much as i love the festivities and everything it does suck that they also reinforce the christian status quo and i wonder if a world where we have all these festivities while not reinforcing christianity could exist

Exactly my experience with my partner who was raised JW

Hahaha yeah

I say this as an Irish man named after a Pope, but also: imgflip.com/i/afn676

I 100% agree. I've started celebrating the only truly secular winter holiday, the dinosaur holiday season. If the history of the Earth were a calendar year, dinosaurs roamed the Earth from December 13th to December 26th and I think that's worth celebrating.

My partner and I just celebrated the Solstice but that’s because my mom is a pagan and raised me with a “never forget what they took from us” kind of mentality when it comes to Christian and American holidays

Just came here to say i fucking love your pfp

This is kind of like "the team belongs to the fans", when in actuality it's owned by an investment company in America or a prince in Saudi Arabia.

after college, I took a gap year where I taught religious school for fifth graders at a shul in New Jersey. One of the kids told me his favorite holiday was Hanukkah “because I get presents.” He did not know nor did he care who Judah Maccabee was. Chanukah is still not a secular holiday

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

I think you can super celebrate chanukah. I do it still because its nostalgoc and makes me feels nice, but I don't really believe in god anymore nor have for years.

I mean look, you're welcome to feel however you want about it. Nobody should be pressured to celebrate any holiday. I do think it's only fair to acknowledge that there's a little bit more going on there tho than just people saying "well I participate in it but I don't actually believe".

My spouse and I (atheist and Catholic-turned-agnostic, respectively) were trying to explain all the manger-themed decorations in our neighborhood to our curious 5-year-old, and realized very quickly that there’s no secular way explain most of Christmas.

The lengths people will go to ignore how entrenched Christianity is can't be measured. It's simply too large, you'd be measuring the last 2000 years of world history and everything in it.

THANK YOU.

It’s only religious if it comes from the Christmas region of France, otherwise it’s just sparkling bank holiday.

It was also placed near Saturnalia to make the conversion easier for Romans after the canonization. The gift giving part actually comes from that too.

I want the pagan version back

If you want to convince me that “the eucharistic rite of the christ” is not a Christian holiday you’re gonna have to work a lot harder than just say “but what about consumerism.” if consumerism made a holiday not religious then there would be no religious holidays, because of late capitalism

Screw all religions#!! It is a security blanket

France is officially a secular country, they enforce some form of secularity in public and governmental spaces which makes you forget that a whole lot of our holidays are christian holidays. It's good to be reminded.

I'm pretty certain you would agree with the take "let people celebrate the holiday they are most comfortable with" but I think you made a rhetorical mistake trying to make this point considering you have a bunch of people who I also think agree with it arguing with you.

I grew up in a church (nominally) that doesn't recognize Christmas as a religious holiday, but my family still always celebrates it. I think for a lot of people it's more accurate to say that they observe it as a cultural holiday, rather than it claim a secular holiday.

And, I guess, is your take, then, that American culture is fundamentally Christian, not secular?

Passover would be more appropriate for the point your making here. I hope I'm not coming off as antagonistic, I love your analysis and well formed opinions just putting my two cents in as a Jew who celebrates Christmas for the birth of our Lord Santa.

My only legit argument against this, is the fact that most of the traditions and celebrations where directly stolen from older "pagan" religions and the only reason Christianity celebrates the birth of Christ in December because of Constantine explicitly using it to over ride said cultures.

everyone else does". Despite my upbringing, and even though I adore Christmas music and classic Christmas movies, I very much agree with OP that Christmas is in no way secular. The religion is obscured in many situations, but it's still there.

and this is another thing. I'm a jew and a leftist who loves christmas. The commercialism and religious things are both points of paradox I do have to reckon with, and maybe this is sappy, but I do see a value between those things, a more essential spirit of an end-year celebration that I cherish.

This helped me with Atheism: youtu.be/lVnyuezZ13c

Christmas is "Christian" sure, but it's also a wrap of pagan elements that Christians would be less comfortable acknowledging than atheists about the inserted Christ elements of it.

as a muslim person i've always felt like i'm judged for having this opinion and immediately labeled as an extremist 🤡 so happy to see other reasonable people feeling the same way

Santa, ya know from the Bible

Then let them have the name Christmas and just call it the winter solstice celebration.

We must invent “Mas.” It shalt be upon the 28th of December to make it even more strenuous to plan things between it and New Years. The contents of Mas are decided via populist vote each year, with the first three years of implementation at least two homicides have occurred at voting stations.

Whether you approach Christmas as a religious holiday, a secular holiday, or ignore it, the problem comes when you try to make others adhere to your beliefs.

Yeah totally

Yeah, all the consumerism arguments fall kinda flat, the normalization of it is directly related to Christianity as a political/economic/cultural force, atheists like myself need to be more willing to acknowledge their cultural Christianity, and to stop assuming theyre free from its influence

yes!! even when i was going to church as a kid i got bad vibes from how overcommercialized christmas is, and now that i’ve stopped i just get the ick from how saturated american culture is with christianity

It's pagan, not christian

Though, of which is different is impossible for me to tell

Actually, that's a very common myth, and the historical data actually suggests that many of those traditions attributed to Yule were either adapted from other pagan celebrations or, more likely, created later by Christians and misattributed to pagan cultures in retrospect. youtu.be/uW5vGf17yaU

I am planning to celebrate Yule on January 2nd, 3rd & 4th.

(i tell People "Happy Holidays!" in the same Breath as I excitedly tell them about the Solstice and the first Day of Winter and the Sun switching from waning to waxing~)

Maybe I'm wrong 'cause I don't know when the term "Cultural Judaism" started, but I feel like I've heard that for a long time, and it's easy to just swap out Judaism and apply it to another religion.

Yeah you’re probably right, just where I pulled it from.

I don't think of Christmas as a secular holiday but I think it can be celebrated in that way. I'm first generation Viet-American and for my family celebrating Christmas was always about being a part of the culture, so we celebrated it without any of the religious aspects.

Actually some of the Christmas practices are pagan. Like the tree and Santa. The only religious aspect of it is that it's jesus' birthday and the only religious part of that is if you believe that jesus was an actual divine being or not. Enjoy your pagan parties <3

But it's just an amalgamation of mostly pagan traditions, and lore-wise Jesus was not born anytime in December so it's not coherent. A. Hodge podge of pagan and secular traditions of Europe mixed with the coca cola company and consumerism. Note that I'm by birth half-jewish & half-christian