Christmas for Humanists

Just as most children are weaned off their belief in Santa Claus as the bringer of their Christmas goodies, by rational thought, so most humanists have weaned themselves off their belief in God – also by rational thought.

Having acknowledged their lack of belief, many wonder how they should handle Christmas – should they ignore it, deny it or strike some happy medium?

There is no single answer, rather it is up to each individual to make up their own mind, but here are a couple of ideas….

Humanists are great believers in human happiness, and see festivals and rites of passage as excellent excuses for a good celebration. Christmas time, which was, after all, a pagan festival long before the advent of Christianity, is one of those festivals which many humanists do celebrate.
They ignore the religious side of it completely, and concentrate on having a good time.

Others, on the other hand, don’t – and make a stand by refusing to get sucked into the commercialism of it all. It is really quite possible to stand back from it – to bin all the catalogues advertising the hundreds of things that we can all so happily live without, to avoid the isles in supermarkets loaded up with heavily packaged goods that people would not normally look twice at, and instead, let everyone know what you’re doing and why.

Increasingly, people are donating to charity the money that they might otherwise have spent on Christmas; those devoted to the homeless are very popular, or there are projects in the third world…....
…….WATCH this space for details to follow…..

It is, at the end of the day, so easy to have a good end-of-the-year-time with friends and family, without spending vast sums of money.

It’s your choice!

Should anyone be interested, there is a new publication called ‘Doing December Differently’ to which I have contributed a short section from the humanist point of view.
Jean Hickson