Posted on 12/01/2012 7:23:12 AM PST by Raebie
Long have atheists cried foul when plastic baby Jesus was placed in front of a courthouse, when public schools cultishly indoctrinated their children with choir songs about silent nights involving baby Jesus, when animated holiday specials suddenly transitioned into stories about the adorable baby Jesus and how three kings gave him expensive jewelry, and he turned milk to chocolate milk and started talking at 6 months instead of the usual 12 to 14 and tested well in placement evaluations, etc., and so forth. Atheists deserve a holiday free from problematic religious associations (or as atheists call it, Insidious Mind Poison), so I propose a new entirely atheist version of Christmas featuring similar traditions along with a few new ones.
It will be called Icy Hullabaloo. Icy Hullabaloo will be icy, not just because of the winter season, but because of its concern with cold stark reality and its adherence to rational laws. The hullabaloo, on the other hand, will result from the deafening cacophony of dozens of atheists’ self-righteous monologuing between bites of green bean casserole. Oh, the earsplitting din of their smug yapping will instill a quiet despair in the hearts of children, starting a tradition that will be passed down through the generations, like a virus, like a genetic predisposition for colon cancer.
There will be a Christmas tree, yes, but it will be called the Slowly Dying Conifer. Why the Slowly Dying Conifer? Well, the Slowly Dying Conifer serves to remind us of the terrible truth of our lives: we did not ask to be here, but here we are. Though we may put on a show, appear festive, bright, and full of life, we are in fact slowly dying in public. And when we do finally die, our accumulated ornaments and baubles are stripped from us, our bare corpses thrown out with the garbage — just another pile of lifeless organic matter, no different from the sticky gunk coating a microwave or the brown leaves frozen to the porch. There will be no pearly gates, no shining city; only a chemical transition to flakes of fertilizer.
As a vehicle for inculcating faith-based conceptions in children’s undeveloped brains, Santa Claus unfortunately can’t be a part of the Icy Hullabaloo canon. However, he’ll be replaced with Eternity, a grim-faced manifestation of the infinite dressed in black robes covered in stars. He stands in the corner of the child’s room on Hulaballoo Night, silently gazing at them from the moment they go to bed to the moment they wake up. When the child wakes, Eternity hands him/her a large, beautifully wrapped present. The child unwraps the present, opens the box, and reveals… there’s nothing inside. Quietly sobbing, the child looks up into the pale white face looming overhead, its reptilian eyes wide with portent.
“Do you see now?” asks Eternity. “DO YOU SEE?”
“Yes,” says the child. “I see.”
And then Eternity leaves the room, or, if the child’s been naughty, beats the child with a long gold stick called Existential Despair.
Stockings will be replaced with old ragged socks pinned over the fireplace. Overnight, each sock will be stuffed with a clean new replacement sock, reminding children of the cyclical nature of the universe. We ourselves are socks, gradually accumulating grime throughout our lives before giving birth to The New, the replacements for ourselves, our children.
The father ceremonially pulls the clean sock from the dirty one and presents it to the child. “I am the dirty sock,” says the father.
“And I am the clean sock,” answers the son.
“Yes…” says the father sadly, peering through the window at an approaching black storm cloud. “Yes, you are.”
Instead of the nativity scene on people’s front lawns, there would be statues of Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Philip Pullman gathered around a giant inflatable atom. Alternatively, one could decorate the lawn exactly as one would for Halloween (gravestones, monsters, but no ghosts of course — they are but hallucinations of diseased minds). Alternatively, one could decorate the lawn with the Hullabaloo Human Cow, a cow with the bowed head of a human, its expression frozen in sorrow. For after all, we are not superior beings engineered by a divine force; we are animals, beasts, no different from the cattle we slaughter so casually.
Atheist families will still gather on December 24 for a dinner called the Supper-cilious. The Supper-cilious will consist of children attempting to eat gross vegan cuisine while their parents shout at each other about how every terrible event is attributable to religion, recite Bill Maher monologues, and affirm their superior intelligence amidst the great ocean of American ignorance.
‘When I grow up, I’m going to believe Jesus coexisted with dinosaurs,’ the children will think to themselves as someone turns on the Icy Hullabaloo special, The Sunset Limited. ‘I’m going to believe in astrology and Xenu and Yahweh ben Yahweh, and then I’m going to run for Congress.’
April Fools’ Day was taken?
They could worship me if they wish. I won’t condemn nor encourage them.
It would be nice if they would sacrifice an Ox on “Creekness” and offer many juicy steaks.
No. Only those who insist upon taking Christmas away from the rest of us. I know plenty of atheists who are not political about it and participate in the festivities ( in a non religious way of course).
Soon to be reality near you along with Festivus.
Atheism is a religion.
It is their belief system relating to the existence (or in their case, the nonexistence) of a divine creator.
The fact that the courts routinely issue edicts favoring their belief-system (religion) over the belief-systems of Christians and Jews (for the most part, they only attack Christians and Jews) is unconstitutional.
Good luck with them shutting up or practicing what they preach, however.
(Full disclosure: I consider myself agnostic, bordering on atheism. My opinion though is that Judeo-Christian values are great, moral values and are what this country was founded upon. I see, and oppose, the militant atheist religion's attacks on those religions.)
I have a pretty good idea.
The atheists I know LOVE to celebrate Christmas. They just make it a day to give presents, and think of Santa Claus, Reindeer, snowmen, trees, snow, Grinches, and any number of distractions, that have little to nothing to do with the birth of Jesus.
If you assume atheists hate Christmas, you’re assuming they are rational, logical, and consistent to their world-view.
They are not. They cannot be.
In 1960, the US Supreme Court, in the Torcaso case, decalared secular humanism not only atheistic but also a religion in the same sense that Buddhism and Taoism are religions. Humanism, by implication, was granted status as a worldview complete with its own theology.
"Among religions in this country...[is]...secular humanism"
Supreme Court Justice Black, 1960
WRONG: an Atheist Christmas must celebrate the birth of NOTHING. Atheism is the ultimate nihilism.
Most of my fellow atheists who celebrate Christmas simply consider it a mid-winter holiday that was previously pagan, co-opted by Christians, and represents winter solstice, or is just an excuse to brighten up the winter blues. Personally, I enjoy it. I don’t celebrate it myself anymore, but I like the pretty lights all over town.
I thought it was April 1st
Haha! Wonder if my atheist brother will show up for Christmas if I send this to him. Hahaha!
It happened gradually over a period of years. I was raised Catholic, then embraced agnosticism, then atheism, then agnosticism again, and eventually, after a few “experiences,” returned to the Church. A complete circle.
It should be in August
We can use another 3 day weekend in the summer
Well said.
Agnostics merely say that there is not sufficient proof of God (any god). Some will thus stipulate that there is no valid reason for beliefs therein to be a part of the laws or official structure of society or make lack of profession any sort of basis for disqualification for a position in government or industry, others will say “but look at what works, our Constitution has a theistic basis and it is the best structure ever devised for running the affairs of men”. One cannot lump all agnostics together, they range from “there is no evidence of anything” to “spiritual but no faith tradition has provided evidence that it is the One.
No government could possibly EVER stop someone from worshiping in their heart. Indeed I know of evangelical Christians who feel that persecution only makes their faith stronger (which makes sense, it’s one thing to merely go along in what you were raised in, it’s something else to profess when there is punishment or ostracism for doing so)
A lot of people confuse “Atheist” with “Agnostic”. There is no way to disprove God. An agnostic will say “fine, worship as you wish, and I might often agree that many of the values you believe are divinely inspired are good for society, even if I see them as merely an end result of societal trial and error”. That there be no religious test is even written into our founding documents. Agnosticism is a perfectly valid viewpoint that would be disrespected by only a rude moron.
Atheism, on the other hand has all of the attributes of a religion - the requirement for ‘faith’, the need to confront and proselytize, the ‘inner circle’ versus ‘them’ mindset that feels persecuted when it encounters ANY disagreement..... in other words, none of the benefits (joy, forgiveness, hope) and all of the dangers (rationalization of the use of force and violence or merely opprobrium against /non believers’).
When Muslims take over the world, they will eliminate the atheists.
There are indeed religious atheists. They subscribe to atheistic magazines, attend conferences about atheism, go out of their way to convince others of their beliefs, write and read books about atheism, rejoice when someone rejects God, and generally wallow in the subject.
Thing is, they have to believe God, if only to deny Him.
Not a new phenomena.
There is actually a parable in the Jain religion about a person who was so vehement in his denial of God that he actually is brought before God and commended to everyone as an example of true and fervent belief! . Very snarky for 4th century BC writing and truly funny.
How about an atheist nativity scene with baby Stalin? Or the little Pol Pot lay asleep in his bed?
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