Wednesday, 28 November 2018

Writing to an atheist podcast about the problem of replacing Christmas.

Hi, I'm a nihilistic atheist (I reject much more than just monotheism) and I'm writing with a topic suggestion for your consideration.  I can volunteer to help, but I assume the help would be unwanted.*

The topic is: how do we try to NOT celebrate Christmas with our children, but to provide something better / different for our children.

* (My youtube channel has 3.2 million total views… but that's been gradually acquired over 4 years… I assume you'd just be interested in the topic, and not in my actual collaboration).

What makes this topic so interesting is the level of defensive hostility this raises amongst atheism-activists (and as someone born Jewish, it is parallel to the topic of circumcision amongst secular Jews, I'd say).

I have yet to have a single atheist activist or youtuber respond in a sympathetic way to the fact that I have a 5 year old daughter and I'm going to make the effort to try to have some kind of gift-giving holiday that is NOT Christmas, because I actively reject Christianity.

When I ask them, "Would you have this same attitude if I were an ex-Muslim, explaining to you my struggle to NOT celebrate Ramadan despite tradition, cultural expectations, family, etc.?", they suddenly have nothing to say.  And I don't just use Islam as a contrast, I also refer to Hinduism, Communism, etc.

As with excuses for circumcision (amongst atheists), there is a deep-seated tendency to excuse and preserve what's familiar, even if that preservation makes hypocrites of us all.  People treat me as if I'm a troll in raising an issue I'm really sincere about: my parents were both Communists, and I have lived in two different Communist countries (plus one ex-Communist country)… it is a significant decision NOT to celebrate figures like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Marx, when you live in a culture that does celebrate them.  It's a significant decision to NOT celebrate Christmas.  And apparently this challenge (in pursuit of cultural change) is just too much for many atheist activists to deal with.

My video on the topic (reaching a modest 1,000 viewers… an unpopular topic by any measure) is here: