Why atheists can still celebrate Christmas

Do atheists celebrate Christmas? With these thoughts is atheist, humanist, author and University of Kent professor of philosophy Richard Norman

Do atheists celebrate Christmas? Of course. But should we? Are we intruding on what is essentially a Christian religious festival? Maybe we’re simply adding to the commercialisation, turning it into an orgy of buying and spending, and distorting the true meaning of Christmas.

But what is this “true meaning of Christmas”? It’s not straightforward. There is no reason to think that Jesus was born in midwinter, let alone on December 25. The early Christians did not mark his birthday. It was not until the 4th century, after Christianity had become the religion of the Roman empire, that the feast of the Nativity was introduced.

The date was probably chosen to coincide with the traditional Roman festival of Saturnalia – the midwinter celebrations when people marked the turn of the year with feasting and merrymaking, exchanging presents and decorating their houses with greenery and candles.

December 25 itself was the feast of Sol Invictus, the “Unconquered Sun”, celebrated as the days slowly started to lengthen after the shortest day.

The medieval Christmas also drew on the northern European tradition of Yule, another midwinter festival marking the turning of the year with feasting and drinking. The symbols of holly and ivy and mistletoe have nothing to do with Christianity and everything to do with the survival of nature through the darkest time of the year.

In the 17th century some Puritans tried to ban Christmas precisely because they saw it as a pagan festival rather than a Christian one.

One Puritan clergyman wrote in 1648 that by adopting the Roman celebrations of Saturnalia the Church had brought “all the heathenish customs and pagan rites and ceremonies that the idolatrous heathens used, as riotous drinking, …gluttony, luxury, wantonness, dancing, dicing, stage plays, masks, mummeries, with other pagan sports and profane practices into the Church of God”.

For similar reasons, in 1647 the Mayor of Canterbury, William Bridge, ordered that “Christmas Day and all other superstitious festivals should be put down and that a market should be kept on Christmas Day”.

This was too much for the citizens of Canterbury. They reacted in various ways. Some wanted to mark the day as a Christian festival, and gathered at church to demand a sermon. Others went around decking doorways with holly bushes.

And others again started games of street football, and pointedly kicked balls through the windows of Puritan houses. The next day the mayor called out the militia, a man was shot and wounded, a riot broke out and the unrest in the city continued for several weeks.

What we think of as the traditional Christmas is above all a 19th century creation. It was Queen Victoria and Prince Albert who introduced the German custom of the Christmas tree as the centrepiece of the family Christmas. And our idea of “the true spirit of Christmas” is largely shaped by Charles Dickens, whose story A Christmas Carol presented the ideal of Christmas as a time of goodwill and good cheer – with little reference to the Christian nativity. I’m not proposing an alternative candidate for “the true meaning of Christmas”. I’m not suggesting that it’s “really” pagan rather than Christian. Of course, at the heart of it there is the story of the baby born to a young couple who were on the move and had nowhere to stay except an outhouse, and who then had to flee from a cruel ruler and seek refuge in another country.

It’s a story with an enduring resonance, not least in our own time. Perhaps the most important thing about Christmas, then, is that we can all join in celebrating it, whether or not we’re Christians, whether we keep it as a religious or a secular festival, whether we’re celebrating the Nativity or the turn of the year or the spirit of conviviality or all three.

So yes, as an atheist and a humanist I’ll be sharing in the spirit of Christmas. For me that spirit is summed up in the community carol singing on Christmas Eve in Rose Lane in Canterbury.

It’s always packed, it’s real singing, not the piped stuff, there are secular Christmas songs as well as religious carols, and it brings people together in a real community event.

I enjoy the carol singing, and decorating the house with a Christmas tree and holly, and on Christmas Day a winter walk and the exchange of gifts and a shared family meal, and I see all these as authentic expressions of the rich mix of traditions which make up “the true meaning of Christmas”.

‘Perhaps the most important thing about Christmas, then, is that we can all join in celebrating it’

You don’t have to be a Christian to get into the festive spirit, says Richard Norman