Didn’t vote, because I’m an atheist who rather enjoys a carol service. Something about the tradition and rhythm of the season. Not a great fan of the commercialism. I’d be happy with carols, tree, turkey and the Queen’s speech, and would be happy to forgo the gift giving and the office Christmas party.
I’m currently an atheist who was raised nominally Roman Catholic. Our mother took us to church regularly, but day-to-day life in between involved very little mention of God and Jesus.
For me, Christmas is just about a perfect admixture of the religious and secular. We often went to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, but on the way there and back, we’d tune the radio to listen to the NORAD updates on where Santa Claus was at the time. “Twas the Night Before Christmas” and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” both got equal time being read aloud. There are songs on both sides of the secular/religious divide that I love, and that I hate.
Even now, a good rendition of Silent Night or Oh Come, All Ye Faithful can revive the feelings of those quiet cold Christmas Eves past, even though I currently don’t believe any of the stories behind it.
The way I see it, virtually every Northern Hemisphere culture has had some sort of Solstice celebration, sometimes religious, sometimes not. For better or worse, at this time and in this culture, Christmas is largely the default such celebration for us. So I just lean into it, enjoy the nostalgia and fun bits, and ignore the bits that annoy me.
I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.
-Charles Dickens
There are two Christmases. One is the commercial festival of obscene spending, protracted snacking, Santa, gaudy decorations, and relentless covers of the same 4 goddamned Hymns. Then there is the celebration of the symbolic or literal arrival of Jesus and the new covenant with God and all that. I’ve wandered away from organized religion, so I don’t care about the Jesus thing. And I am absolutely disgusted with the excess I see in the commercial season (because I’d be a Christian if I could) so after Thanksgiving I just lay low, smile and nod until 12/26, and get on with my life.
I went with HoHoHo because I think there is a part of me that could do the merry-making if life weren’t otherwise too stressful, and I really do like the lights and glitter. Bollocks pisses on other people’s parade and that’s not generally my style.
I chose O Come All Ye Faithful but I love the other songs too. I tend to enjoy the message of Jesus’ birth more now that I am an adult. I watched the movie The Star on Netflix this weekend with 2 of my grandkids. It’s about the donkey that brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem and the other animals involved. Like most kids, they’re all about the presents and Santa. It made me happy to see them quietly watching this movie.
Well it’s kind of supposed to be. It captures the longing for deliverance that has been promised, but not yet come. It is my favorite Advent hymn by far.
I love Christmas, both the pagan tradition of the Christmas tree, and the religious Christmas carols. I love giving gifts and making them look beautiful, and I love the baking and cooking. I associate the joy of Christmas with my mother mostly, though, and I don’t know how I’ll feel about it once she is gone. I might not celebrate it anymore then, and go on a trip instead.
Used to enjoy it, now I just don’t. I’m not a Christian, so I don’t feel the need to “celebrate” a Christian holiday, even if it’s just in a festive, cultural kind of way. Just not my thing. December 25th will be an ordinary Tuesday for me.
I grew up Lutheran, and am now Roman Catholic. We’re not regular church-goers, but Advent and Christmas services are a must in our family (and Easter of course). On the way to and from Christmas services, the car radio is off, just to get some quiet time before the holiday really starts. On the way home, the radio is still off, because we have “O Come All Ye Faithful” and the other Christmas hymns playing through our heads, and we’re talking about the cute kids at the kid’s sermon. We celebrate Christmas Eve, so then it’s home to a pan of lasagna or something that can bake while we’re at church, clean up the dishes, open presents, and finally relax and eat Christmas treats. We’ll also do a large Christmas day meal with more relatives showing up.
If the stores weren’t decorated for the last month, and the radio didn’t have holiday songs, and no one had lights on their houses, we’d still have the same Christmas.
I am fine with both I suppose. Christmas Day itself tends to be pretty Ho Ho Ho, but Advent is always fairly religious. We light our candles at meal times and discuss Christ’s coming. We have an advent calendar where every box is another piece of the nativity. We celebrate the four preceding Sundays. On the 23rd, we’ll go to a Taize service and then Christmas Eve Services on the 24th. We’ll typically go caroling with our church, but we ask the faith preferences of the houses we knock on so that it’s secular songs for non-believers, Dreidl for Jewish people and religions songs for Christians, so kinda religious/secular mix. We read the Christmas story before bed on Christmas Eve. Anyway, it’s only to say that Advent is typically religious for us and Christmas Day probably less so. Then we pick back up religiously for the 12 days ending on Epiphany, although Epiphany has some quasi-religious celebrations like King Cake and another round of gift-giving.
I actually like the very old songs like O Come, O Come and Gaudete. I sing Gaudete in the shower all December.
It’s a combination of many things for me.
Ok, I voted Ho Ho Ho. In my religion, it’s a secular holiday. But it’s a secular holiday that’s marked by the celebration of the birth of Christ, and particularly marked by singing “O come, all ye faithful”, “The First Noel”, “O little town of Bethlehem” and “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas”
Personally, it’s also marked by my family singing “Happy Birthday” to me. I’ve never understood people who won’t wish me a Happy Birthday, just because it’s not their birthday.
I grew up in a very conservative Mormon household. Interestingly, Jesus wasn’t really big part of my family’s brand of Mormonism, as Joseph Smith was the main character. We would have the annual Christmas program in Sunday School, put on by children. I participated in it when I was a child, of course.
However, it wasn’t particularly a religious festival in our house. When I used to visit with my sister and her family at Christmas, her husband would always give a really long prayer before the Christmas dinner. (In which he would inevitably say something really stupid and his daughter and I would be biting our tongues to keep from laughing.) I don’t remember anything like that at my home.
Other than the early 2000s when I visited my sister, I’ve been out of America for Christmas since 1989. Japan has a scaled down version of Christmas with decorations in stores, music and such, but the small city I live in Taiwan has almost none. My kids really got into Santa, but they are 10 and 8 now, and less into it than before.
I’m definitely with the O Come, All Ye Faithful crowd, but would prefer if you pronounced it “Adeste Fideles” 
Xmas to me is a pagan celebration of the solstice, with festive greenery, gifts to placate malevolent powers of darkness, and gorging on tidbits to get me through hibernation during the rest of the winter.
Based on the lovely holiday-themed billboard one sees traveling south on I-71 towards Cincinnati, others have a more religious take on the holiday.
Voted ho. Atheist, but raised Catholic. Am aware of the religious nature of so many carols, but still enjoy singing/playing them. The Christ story is no more/less of a fairy tale than Santa!
I’m an atheist who doesn’t really need an excuse to increase his drinking and use of recreational drugs. But what the hell.
We sound like twins!
And yet, despite that, Linus can still make me shiver.
I wish it wasn’t an either/or proposition.
I enjoy Christmastime, and Santa Claus, and Christmas trees and decorations, and variations on “A Christmas Carol” on TV, and presents, and silly Hallmark Christmas specials, and so on. All secular.
But I also sang in church choir for many years, including Christmas services. We sang traditional Christian carols at this time of year. You couldn’t get away from the religious aspect of the celebration when you were in church choir. Some of the lessons stuck: “Do unto others,” and “Forgive us our trespasses,” and the lesson of “Good King Wenceslas.”
Perhaps for me, it’s not so much religious, as it is the lessons I learned at church. So I guess I’m a mixture of “Ho-Ho-Ho” and “O Come All Ye Faithful.”
My yoga teacher is a Zen Buddhist, so one day at the end of class, instead of chanting “om,” she had us chant the Zen syllable “ho” three times. It was Christmastide.