What general midwinter holiday? True, Neopagans have Yule, but the Jewish holiday season is in the fall, and Muslims don’t have a holiday season: Their calendar is purely lunar, so their holidays rotate throughout the solar year. “Happy holidays” really means “Merry Christmas,” while trying to be considerate by acknowledging that not everyone is Christian. Consideration is always good, so thank you for the good wishes, kind people—it just doesn’t quite work in this case. But I digress.
Agreed. I came to her defense immediately above, but that was after I totally misunderstood her the first time and my initial reply to that snip of hers was vehement disagreement. As is my style I didn’t personalize it though.
FYI when I first read your post that we’re discussing I had forgotten that you were on the atheist team. As such I read your :headslap: as “Jeez, how could any atheist possibly be so stupid / uninformed / uncouth as to think everyone doesn’t start their Thanksgiving with prayers. The very idea of religion not being the centerpiece of every Thanksgiving feast in the land is preposterously unthinkable. That fellow I quoted who claimed T-Day was de-religonized is sure an idiot.”
That is what your :headslap: said to me
Which I later learned is exactly the opposite of your intended meaning.
If you want to be sarcastic you must say “I’m being sarcastic” in plain obvious English. Either that or the many hyper-literalists among us will misread it. Here’s one technique:
[sarcasm]
Trump is a great leader and a true Christian.
[/sarcasm]
In a similar vein, if explaining a POV you don’t actually hold, it’s vital to point out in plain English that that’s what you’re doing.
Many readers are so caught up in their beliefs that they simply can’t comprehend someone talking about a belief the speaker doesn’t actually agree with. To those readers, everything is polemic, nothing is analysis.
I spend a lot of time in politics, history, or military threads explaining what the opposition is thinking & why they’re doing what they’re doing. I carefully point out my own POV up front. Up front, not at the end.
Why? Many posters will start reading a post, get a hot flash triggered by some sentence in it, then immediately highlight, click {Quote} and start typing their outraged reply to your impertinence. Never even getting down to the bottom of your post where you issue your disclaimer that all that was explaining your opponent’s POV, not your own. So get that out of the way up front.
You are of course free to post in whatever style you prefer. But what I describe has helped reduce misunderstandings of my writing for nigh 20 years and nearly 22K posts.
If anyone posts enough, they’re bound to say something dumb, incorrect, or that’s not well-received. I’m OK with dropping the occasional turd in the punchbowl. But as much as possible I’d like to avoid being accused of a turd when it was really a cherry. Or at least when it was intended to be a cherry.
Welcome. We’re glad you’re here. I sincerely hope you stay for the long haul.
It was a clue. But I thought it applied to the idea that Thanksgiving wasn’t religious, not to the idea that everybody prays at Thanksgiving.
Just speaking for myself, I think that you can write clearly or you can have your fun. I prefer that people write clearly and plainly.
The Jewish holidays also are lunar and move around, though they’re seasonally connected. Hanukkah, while not really an equivalent to Christmas (though it is a happy holiday), sometimes falls at the same time; sometimes it’s closer to Thanksgiving.
And then there’s Kwanzaa; and Pancha Ganapati; and the Dongzhi Festival.
Those, of course, don’t cover anywhere near everybody; not even if we add in the people celebrating either a Pagan or an atheist solstice day, and those who would presumably still get a midwinter holiday from school whether as teachers, students, or some of staff, and might well be happy about it. But most people do in some fashion celebrate New Year’s, which falls quite close to Christmas and is definitely a midwinter holiday. That could quite reasonably remain a Federal holiday.
To amplify on this, it being too late to edit: I didn’t think BippityBoppityBoo necessarily did such things at Thanksgiving themselves. But I did think they were under the impression that most other people did.
I’ll echo this. That was my impression as well.
Is that your third cola?
I usually go with [/sarcasm] at the end.
Or sometimes before I start [sarcasm mode]
Some NeoPagans have Yule. Others celebrate the Solstice. Some actually celebrate Christmas because many NeoPagan groups have no problem with celebrating the holidays of other religions, especially with friends and family.
I pointed out that the mid-winter festival tends to be a feature of temperate regions. Judaism and Islam are originally from the Middle East, which has a different yearly cycle and not such extremes of weather and daylight/night. Even so, the Jewish holiday of Hanukah does tend to fall near Christmas.
Some atheists celebrate the Solstice and the Gregorian New Year.
LOTS of people celebrate the New Year in the Gregorian calendar around the world even if they are not and never have been Christian, even if they also celebrate some other New Year at another time.
Some people don’t take Kwanza seriously but it’s yet another holiday in the dark of the year.
No, “Happy Holidays” means “have a good day whatever holiday you’re celebrating”. Which for most Americans includes Christmas, true, but acknowledging everyone else is important.
‘Season’s Greetings’ works pretty well. Granted it’s not as poetic but are there drawbacks to it that I’m not seeing? 
Indeed. It’s arguably the most inclusive holiday on the Western calendar - it’s not tied to any specific faith, or any specific ethnicity, or even any specific country. (Yes, it’s an American holiday that’s rooted in a myth from American history, but the fundamental idea of gathering together to share a meal and express gratitude can easily be adopted by any nation, without reference to the Pilgrims and the Narragansett.)
Nope. I sit quietly with hands in my lap and wait for it to stop. An atheist Reform Jew, I do not bow my head for prayers when attending my own services—nor do many other congregants—so I don’t do so for other religious services either.
Oops, sorry, waaaaay late to the discussion; didn’t look at the date cuz I’ve been commenting at other sites where discussions were current. Been a while since I’ve commented on SD.
When it comes to people lording their religion over me, I usually apply rule number one: never care what they say. Quite simply, it is a waste of effort to try to convince a true believer to stop believing, and it gets in the way of developing relationships with lots of terrific people and useful organization.
Sometimes I’ll get into an epistemological discussion, but quite frankly it always comes down to their belief trumping facts and rational reasoning. Might a well debate with a child who is holding their breath.
Now here’s the thing: they probably figure the same about me in how I let my thoughts stand in the way of accepting their god.
As a feminist and as an atheist I try to help create a world in which we can all help each other to ensure equity for all. That can only be accomplished by moving the centre away from religion, for with religion comes a self-assumed auctoritas that often is used to shit on other people.
What’s interesting is that in my country, Canada (and I assume in many other countries as well), there is a religious aspect to religion and a cultural aspect to religion, in that although about two-thirds of Canadians believe in god, about a third of the Roman Catholics don’t believe in god and about a third of the Protestants don’t believe in god. Roughly a quarter of Canadians truly, truly, really truly believe there is a god, and slightly fewer Canadians nope, nope, no way do the believe in god.
With so much doubt filling the air, and instant and infinite communication at our fingertips, I think it is important to relate with people on what we share and explore where we might be able to further share, rather than isolate ourselves in high castle keeps throwing down little balls of defecate derision at our bewildered adversaries.
So yeh, I put up with religion for the most part while at the same time I try to be inclusive of religious people in my attempts to make a better world.
The OP addresses the day to day imposition of religion into the lives of all. Like the slogan “In God We Trust”. Gimme a break - what self respecting God would accept such a plea from an armed mob that deploys atomic bombs worldwide. However, the slogan is sacred (pun unintended). It’s the third rail of American politics to even consider abolishing it.
Then there’s the way religious freedom is taught in our schools. ‘The Puritans were persecuted in England so they came to America seeking religious freedom’. No they didn’t! The Puritans were a vile bunch of absolutists who got so involved in politics that the British tossed them out. They came to America so they could hang Quakers as heretics. Quakers? Religious freedom might allow hanging a pagan indian or a witch or two, but Quakers?
The lesson to be taught by the Puritan story is - keep religion out of government! The slogan “one nation, under God” imposes religious propaganda on our entire population. However, it too is on the third rail list.
A Creator God is a plausible belief. A religious corporation having proprietary knowledge of him/her/it is not. So, to answer the OP, we should develop a strong cultural aversion to public imposition of religious belief. If there is something attractive about Christianity, we will see it in the shining example displayed by Christians, not by their slogans or delusional prattle.
As Jimmy Snow, the YouTuber says, I don’t care what you believe so much as how you treat other people.
You can be the most religious person in the world with a life highly proscribed by your beliefs but so long as you don’t expect others – or worse, force others – to those same proscriptions, believe away.
^ This
For myself, I don’t think it’s part of the Atheist/Agnstic job description to try to change another persons belief system. I grant that some people seem to need some sort of organized mysticism, i.e. religion. But with emphasis, as I see it, that’s their choice.
I concur that it’s rude to try to insert one’s own beliefs into a context where those beliefs are at odds with those held by others.
Respectfully yours, Not_the_ sharpest_roc
Total agreement. I don’t want to persuade others not to believe. I don’t give a hang. I just want them to leave me the hell alone, to stop pressuring me to change my belief system. Christianity is burdened by the Great Commission, the commandment to go out and attract as many adherents as possible. This has led to the excesses and crimes of missionary work, as well as to countless jerks ringing people’s doorbells. Leave. Me. Alone. So damn much to ask?