Non-Christians and Christmas

Yep. Christmas is the most prominent holiday in my country; it would seem downright weird to ignore it. To the extent that I think of a “reason for the season,” it’s a pre-Christian natural/seasonal one, and I’ll call it Yule or Solstice to people who get that. But it’s not really a different thing than the (largely, more-or-less) secular “Christmas” most folks I know actually do. It’s not wrong to call it Christmas, and to share wishes for a merry one.

I’m an atheist - I always have been - and I love Christmas. It’s my favorite time of the year. If I had my druthers, it would be at the end of January, so there’d be something to look forward to during that horrifically cold month in Chicago.

I’m a convert to Judaism (Orthodox), and I don’t celebrate because duh. The rest of my family is Christian-lite and celebrates.

Atheist; I look at it as a time for celebrating with family, about family and togetherness, the religious trappings that come with it are irrelevant to me, and I ignore them, if others in the family want to observe them, fine, as long as they don’t try to force me to participate in their illogical delusions

The family “belief” breakdown is like this;
Me; Atheist
Mom; lapsed believer/Agnostic
Sis; Agnostic
Nephew; Atheist
Niece; Agnostic/Atheist

Uncle; believer
Aunt; Strong Believer (preacher at local church)

We all get along just fine, the religion thing is basically a non issue

I’m a Christian and I thought that this was beautiful.

We cerebrate December 24th having a nice little family dinner with polish food (I’m Polish so that’s what people in Poland do), and then the next day again we have a family +friends dinner at our house or we go to over to somebody’s house.
A little different thing is that we give each others gifts on December 24th after the dinner. We have always somebody who dresses as Santa (kids love it!). But there is absolutely nothing religious about our celebration, we just love the tradition :slight_smile:

Atheist, and I celebrate. I love the cultural tradition. One of the nicest things I can think about my culture is that we make our biggest holiday about giving others things and spending time with them, all to try to bring them joy.
The closest I come to religion, though, is that when watching The Polar Express, by the end I kinda believe in Santa Claus for a few minutes. But then I have always been enthusiastic about getting lost in movies.
No offense, but I dislike seeing Christ drawn into the season.

I was raised Jewish, and my husband was raised Muslim. We’re both atheists, and we celebrate Christmas and other holidays.