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Non-religious at holiday times...
My husband is an atheist and I am a deeply questioning agnostic. My husband's mother is a pastor and my family is heavily involved in my home church.
Holidays can be hard for us, because our families are both religious and we are not, and while we love spending time with them, it can be extremely awkward sometimes.
When we have children, DH and I do not want our children to receive gifts for Christmas, but if our families want to give them something, we have chosen to celebrate the New Year as our big winter holiday. I am nervous to talk to our families about this since they're both so religiously oriented (although they quietly acknowledge that we aren't religious), but it has to be done.
Has anyone else out there dealt with this? How do you deal with religious holidays as a non-religious person? Simply not attending holidays with our families is not really an option - we love our families and it's "free" time to get together with everyone while they're all off work.
Thanks!
Re: Non-religious at holiday times...
I'm not religious either and my DH is Jewish. I see Christmas as more about family than anything else, and we (along w/ his parents, actually) spend Christmas w/ my family.
I guess I'm wondering what your issue is w/ doing presents. Even if you get them to agree to not give your kids presents, I feel that it will be very hard for your kids to be around them at Christmas when they all exchange gifts but yet your kids get nothing.
I also kind of feel- if you, in your small, nuclear family, don't want to do gifts, that's entirely your choice. But what you're asking is that your entire family (who you readily know are very religious) to change how they all do things for you.
Honestly, I find that unfair. If you want their respect, that's one thing. But to then turn around and ask that they change up how they do things is pushing it a bit far.
Why can't your children learn that you all celebrate the NY, but that others in your family celebrate at Christmas. Why can't it also be about teaching your kids to respect "their" holiday and how they do things?
~Benjamin Franklin
DS dx with celiac disease 5/28/10
DH and I are also pretty non-religious...I would say we are agnostic but spiritual? Still deciding...
But anyway, I still celebrate Christmas as a time for appreciating family and celebrating good will and peace and all that...even for religious folks those are important aspects of the holiday that we can all agree upon. So maybe you can use those principles to celebrate Christmas with your child. After all, the whole thing about giving gifts and Santa has nothing to do with religion, there's not much reason to take that out of the equation IMO. Wouldn't be any different than having the Tooth Fairy visit your kid. You can turn Christmas into a way to teach and celebrate giving and generosity and charity, just without the Jesus part.
Think about Halloween, which used to have a religious significance...most people don't think about that part anymore, but they can still celebrate it and have a good time with their kids. Heck, even St. Patrick's Day is supposed to be religious, but you can see how that turned out in the US!
It's all up to you as a couple, but also consider the impact it will have on your child.
I actually really appreciate that you're not celebrating the commercialized Christmas since you aren't religious. As religious person myself, I sometimes get aggravated with people who celebrate and do not believe. I think that if you approach the topic with your families and are honest with them, they should understand your reasons for not wanting to participate in something you don't believe in.
You can also let them know that hopefully, when they are old enough you will let your children decide what to believe and practice and are thankful that you were raised to be able to do so for yourself as well.
Honestly, breaking any family traditions is hard and when you get married it should be almost expected that things will change in some way. Stick to your guns about what you and your DH want for YOUR family.
Good luck!
i agree with this.
but if you don't have kids yet - i wouldn't stress about the "no presents" thing... because chances are once you have a child- you'll want to do presents... it's the most fun time of year with my kids- i can't imagine not doing presents at christmas with them.... let alone what it would do to them at school- since almost every kid is getting presents for some sort of winter holiday.
I would suggest becoming a more informed agnostic/ atheist. Even before Christianity was created, most cultures had a big important winter holiday. Find something about the day that you can relate to.
Search for Christmas on the History Channel website.
And on that relevant note, DH and I celebrate after the Wheel of the Year. I don't want to clutter up this post with the technical details of my religious beliefs. It's easy to wiki if you're not sure what I mean
In any case, DH and I are not visiting with family this year, and so left to our own devices we are celebrating the Solstice on the 21st (read: Yule). I really don't see the point of celebrating Jesus' hypothetical birthday with a nativity and whatnot if neither of us is an adherent to that religion, lovely as it is.
Solstice is a significant astronomical event rather than an arbitrary day on the Gregorian calendar and has conceivably been celebrated in some fashion since Neolithic times. Now, Pagan Reconstructionism is sketchy at best so I don't see anything wrong with taking the symbolic aspects of the day (rebirth, for instance) and celebrating them or intrepreting them as you see fit. For us, that does include gifts of the stocking-stuffer variety. Small, thoughtful things like an ounce of fine tea, a letterpress calendar for the new year or a new book. Exchanging gifts, in modern terms, is not very uncommon...you bring hostess gifts when you're over at someone's house, you give favors when you host a party, you bring a housewarming gift for a friend that just moved or a new neighbor, graduation gifts, etc. etc.
So, essentially, I wouldn't freak out about the gift thing. If you want to stay low on the materialism scale, request that gifts be small or even food-related. Kiddoes love Halloween in large part because of the free candy, after all. And little ones are, as far as I can see, entertained by pots and pans as much as leapfrog learning systems. By the time they're older, it's easier to explain why they aren't getting video game systems for Christmas (that's what birthdays are for).
My DH and I are pagan as well and our families are both some kind of Christian. DH and I celebrate our own holidays with friends but also do the Christian holidays with our families. We both see it and just a relaxing time to get together and celebrate our family's holidays that mean a lot to them.
I know my parents would be crushed if I told them our future children would not be there for such an important holiday as Christmas. However, I will be teaching my children that it is a holiday from a different religion and the meaning behind it, etc, as opposed to the Solstice. No big deal, kids will learn about these holidays whether we want them to or not because majority of the kids at school will be talking about them.
proud pagan
I don't think you or anyone needs to associate Christmas with Jesus. It was a holiday stolen from the Pagans deliberately right around the time of the winter solstice. There are many aspects of Christianity that were ripped off directly from the Pagans to make the religion seem more familiar and appealing to potential converts.
The point is, celebrate it to celebrate. You don't need to attach meaning (such as Christ's birthday) to the holiday that you don't want to be there. The most important part of any holiday is the family traditions that you start and continue with your potential children. This includes some of the extended family traditions. I really don't think it would be fair to tell your family when they are and aren't allowed to give your children gifts. It is fine if you want to celebrate only New Year's Day or whatever, but I don't see why your extended family can't include your children in their traditions. You can use it as a learning experience about what others believe, if nothing else. If there even was a Jewish dude named Jesus Christ, it is more than likely that he was born in summer time anyway, so quit stressin'. I definitely wouldn't bring it up before you have any children.
ETA: I don't think this matters, but in case you wanted to know, I am an agnostic atheist (and no, they are not mutually exclusive).
Anyway, doing Christmas like this may not go over particularly well with your families if they celebrate Christmas religiously, but you dont have to completely do away with Christmas and gifts because you dont believe. We were told as children what other's believe and celebrate concerning Christmas, and why we do things the way we do. Of course as we got older, the choice of what we believe and dont believe was ours, not our parents, but we stuck to what they taught us. You ultimately decide how to parent your children, so its up to you what you do. This is just my opinion. And I agree with the person who said that if you dont have kids or are pregnant yet, dont make it an issue. Cross that bridge when you get to it. Good luck with whatever you decide to do
I just celebrate Xmas as a secular gift-giving family holiday. I don't attend mass with my mother, so the rest of the holiday doesn't really resemble a religious celebration. For one, the traditions are so garbled over time and multiple religions that they've lost most of their intended meaning anyway. My mother used to pick fights (I could have easily just ignored her baiting comments and am now getting quite good at it), but I've stopped feeling any awkwardness during, say, mealtime prayers because they don't affect me. However, no one in my family who I spend holidays with is as religious as a pastor. Well, SO's father used to be a very frum Jew and is becoming more orthodox as his kids leave the nest. But as a Jew, he's used to half the room performing traditions for their social and historical, rather than spiritual, value. And maybe that's why it's so easy for me now to deal with Xmas; I can respect the value of a holiday about togetherness and life in the bleak winter months, and keep quiet during others' religious exercizes, without feeling any less firm in my own position.
I think picking a different holiday to celebrate as the mid-winter celebration is a perfectly valid option. I would've gone with Festivus, since it's easier to streamline into others' holidays, but New Years is basically based on the same idea. Friends in my generation raised atheist all celebrated Christmas secularly, and were taught about its origins academically.