And then they go and spoil it....

It's that time of year again. I mean of course, the season when we wish each other good cheer and good fortune...in ways which seem to be increasingly fraught with anxiety for some people. There's so many choices of occasion to observe: Christmas, Solstice, New Year, Chanukah, Kwanzaa...what to say?

Now personally, I don't much care what people wish me. Christmas as it has come down to us is a syncretistic mish-mash of ancient European pagan winter solstice rites, Christian legends about the Nativity and Saint Nicholas, heavy overlays of Victorian sentimentalism, hours of music of highly variable quality, and a good helping of modern commercial consumerism. If you want an excuse to party this time of year, there's plenty in there to pick from. Thus my agnostic family-of-origin celebrated a basic Western-cultural sort of Christmas with a tree, presents (whether they came from Santa or Mom and Dad was often somewhat ambiguous), carols on the stereo, and a big dinner with friends. I have happy memories of all that, and tried to give my kids some of the same.

So: "Merry Christmas" works for me, both personally and with respect to my ancestral culture. "Happy Chanukah" picks up my wife's ancestry, so that's good too. But in the unlikely event someone wishes me "Happy Kwanzaa", I won't know what's expected of me (aside from a non-plussed "Um...sure...and the same to you"). I won't be offended (it's too small a thing to get worked up over, and presumably the speaker means well), but I really won't understand what I've been wished. If I respond in kind, am I comitting myself to something? It would feel socially awkward. So it would seem, at the least, courtesy to bestow good wishes in the name of a festival the recipient actually celebrates -- in much the same way as you try to pronounce their names correctly.

Now imagine you're an overworked, underpaid retail employee trying to be polite to (frequently obnoxious) customers during the busiest time of the year. And as part of that you're required negotiate the mine-field of cultural sensitivities contained in an apparently simple greeting. Some stores try to finesse this by mandating the generic "Happy Holidays", but somehow it doesn't have the same ring to it. If only you could read minds....

....and someone has come up with what, at first sight, seems like an excellent idea: sell little buttons bearing the reassuring message "It's OK: Wish Me A Merry Christmas". I like it: it cues the poor store clerk on your preferred salutation, in a light, friendly way. I can see a whole line of these, for Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Solstice, etc, etc. It could be great ecumenical outpouring of mutual respect and understanding! Peace on earth and goodwill to men! Why, one might almost say that it's, well, very much in the spirit of Christmas....

....until you go read the rest of the website. "Happy Holidays"? Did you think it was just a way to be culturally inclusive? (Or even, just a convenient abbreviation signifying Christmas, New Year, and the week in between?) Guess again: it's the "....forces of darkness that are attempting to silence the good news...." (cue scarey music). And I bet you thought "Merry Christmas" was just a customary way of expressing hope that the recipient's last week or so of the year would be a safe and happy experience of spending time with family, attending congenial social gatherings, relaxing at home, and maybe getting some cool new toys, right? Nope. What you're really doing is "....telling them that there is good news and that the God of the universe has put into motion a wonderful plan to offer them salvation...[It] is indeed nothing less than the first step in opening a door to offer someone salvation." Well, golly: all that time when I was growing up godless, I never realized I was actually preaching the occasional Gospel sermon all through December. Who knew?

Of course, no good evangelistic crusade would be complete without a little Shoppin' For Jesus:

[Wearing the button] tells people you are not just shopping for a winter festival, but what you are buying is celebrating your Lord’s birth.

Which irresistibly reminds me of this fleeting shot from Terry Gilliam's dark comedy Brazil:

Seriously, shopping as sacrament? Only in America.... Whereas Jesus cast the money-changers out of the temple, these folks want to bring the temple in to the shopping mall -- Baptisms in the Jacuzzi store? Men's Bible Study in Home Depot; Women's in the Kitchen & Bath department? (For lulz, check out the joy on the "Kudos" page, in honour of adverts for the "Christmas Super Saturday sale" and other great proclamations of faith).

And, Mr. Merchant, if you dare wish us "Happy Holidays", we will be offended (PDF), offended I say! Because the phrase "Merry Christmas" is very very special, and the organizers of this campaign want everyone saying it to each other, all the time (but especially in stores):

As the cycle of wishing and being wished a “Merry Christmas” begins, the forces of darkness in our nation will be affected. Light will be proclaimed. Hope will be announced, and the spiritual atmosphere will be changed.

Kind of like Harry Potter casting a spell, only you don't need to wave a wand to make the magic happen.

Like I say, on the whole I don't care how people choose to express good wishes to me. But if I get the feeling that there's more going on than a simple exchange of human goodwill, that there's an agenda being pushed, I am....inclined to push back. So on the off chance that someone wearing one of those buttons walks up to me, says "Merry Christmas", and stands there expectantly, I shall be very tempted to paste on my biggest smile, and reply in my loudest, cheerfullest voice:


...because some people really, really need to get over themselves.

Hat tip: Friendly Atheist

Day 12 - Merry Newtonmass

It's Newtonmass, and as is our annual tradition, we will share our favourite Newtonmass carol, with a new verse for 2008:

God rest ye merry, physicists
Let nothing you dismay.
Remember Isaac Newton
was born on Christmas Day!
His gravity and calculus and "f" equals "m" "a"!
Oh, pillars of physics and math, physics and math,
Oh, pillars of physics and math!

A factor of big G - the same
for flea and giant star.
Then multiply the masses
and divide by square of "r".
The force that keeps us on the earth and orbits moons afar!
Oh, pillars of physics and math, physics and math,
Oh, pillars of physics and math!

Day 11: Merry Kittehmas & Riddle Answered

I'll say one thing for our humans: they're persistent. Yesterday they went out again and came back with another tree! This one is different: it smells fascinating, but doesn't taste so good. I guess we won't eat this one.

That means dangling decorations! Yay!

Anyway, it's time to reveal the answer to the riddle I posed the other day: why do I like Greg Lake's song I Believe in Father Christmas? Thanks, bPer for trying, but you're not really very close. The musical clue is the instrumental refrain that keeps coming back in that song: that part is not by Greg Lake, it's by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. It is taken from his Lieutenant Kije Suite (I can't help it if everyone spells it wrong), specifically from the Troika movement, which depicts a ride through the snow in a sled drawn by three horses (unfortunately, I cannot find an online audio excerpt).

In the meantime, I see that the humans have finished hanging stuff on the tree -- time to play!

Day 10: Warren Christmas & Pope Maledict

OK, I get that Obama is trying to do the Big Tent thing, and getting a prominent evangelical to deliver the invocation at the Presidential inauguration is part of that. But: Rick Warren? The guy who endorsed California's Proposition 8, to strip gays of a right they already had? And of course, he wouldn't vote for an atheist -- 'cuz everyone knows getting hints from the Big Guy Upstairs is soooo important to a president, right? I mean, look how well that worked out for GWB on the Iraq thing.

To put it into perspective: Would it be Big Tenting, to invite a pastor who was on record as wanting to revoke the franchise from blacks, and who wouldn't vote for a Jew because, really, you need Jesus to hold your hand in the Oval Office?

But speaking of The Bigots vs. Gays game, the Pope has issued a warning of the perils of TEH GAY and, indeed, the whole notion that gender is a social construct. Apparently, blurring the lines between the sexes will lead to the "self-destruction" of humanity, just as surely as if we trash the environment:

We need something like human ecology, meant in the right way. The Church speaks of human nature as 'man' or 'woman' and asks that this order is respected.

This is not out-of-date metaphysics. It comes from the faith in the Creator and from listening to the language of creation, despising which would mean self-destruction for humans and therefore a destruction of the work itself of God.

As a matter of fact Benny, yes it is out-of-date metaphysics: to insist that Male and Female are some sort of transcendent "natures" is Neo-Platonic horseshit, and the phrase "comes from faith in the Creator" is here synonymous with "invented out of whole cloth way back before we knew enough biology to study it properly". Male and female are facts of purely earthly biology, and inconsistent ones at that -- never mind that many organisms get along without sexual differentiation, or switch sexes as needed; even among humans there are those whose anatomical and/or chromosomal characteristics are ambiguous or inconsistent. And the specific cues we customarily use to indicate gender (and the roles we assign) are almost purely social constructs.

Day 9: Santa-ism

I am astonished at the vituperative comments and personal attacks over at Recursivity after Jeff Shallit "confessed" that his family does not subscribe to the religion of Santa-ism. Accusations of ruining the spirit of Christmas, destroying the wonder of childhood, and being self-righteous, dour and humourless abound.

Eamon and I were Christians (albeit fairly liberal by that time) when our children were young. The fact that, when we ourselves were growing up, Eamon's family was agnostic, and mine was secular Jewish, and neither of us had a tradition of Santa-belief probably made it easier for us. One of the main reasons we decided not to deceive our kids about Santa being real and bringing Christmas presents was because we felt that knowingly lying to our kids about Santa would cause them to doubt the veracity of other things we taught them to believe in - ie about Christianity and God. (This does seem rather ironic, in retrospect, as the 21-year-old pointed out to us recently.)

So from an early age, our kids knew that Santa was pretend. And none of the Christmas gifts we gave were "from" Santa, though when he was about 5, our younger son (who happens to have been born on December 25) decided he should dress up as Santa and give out the presents. (Oops, I guess that could not have really happened, since our kids apparently were raised to have no imagination.)

One of the commenters on Recursivity said,

You never know how a child will react to anything you do. My parents took the same approach that you have chosen to take. Santa was never real, just a story. Now that I am older and I hear the stories of my friends from when they were young and I see the joy in children's faces when they think that Santa is coming or when they are writing him a letter, I know my parents robbed me of an experience that I will never be able to duplicate.

Parents and children can have shared joy in pretending, even when everyone knows it's make-believe. There was no pretense about Santa Claus for my kids, but someone filled their stockings with candy and toys while they slept. Everyone knew there was no Easter Bunny, but someone hid plastic eggs around the house. My kids even left notes for the Easter Bunny on a few occasions.

I'll certainly stand up for the imagination and wonder with which I raised my kids against the cynicism of this commenter:

We use the fallacy of santa to control our kids. It worked when I was a kid, and it works with my kids. Soon after you learn the truth, you also learn why it is such a great tool. Kids don't have to grow up so fast.

It's this sort of attitude that results in kids being scared to tell their parents they don't believe because they think they won't get presents any more. Perhaps even worse are the kids who have stopped believing in Santa (at around 9 or 10), but they see that this myth seems to be so important to their parents that they continue to pretend. This is not an approach that fosters open communication between parents and children.

Day 7: Caturday War on Christmas

That's my slightly stupid friend Bertrand Alfred Russell Wallace North Whitehead Insufficient Delta-Vee (but everyone just calls him Russell), and he is the latest Warrior Against Christmas.

The other day, our humans decided they wanted to put up a tree. Since they didn't have one, they went out in the car (Yikes. How can anyone stand being in those things?) and came home with a box. As soon as they got the tree out of the box, Russell decided it had a flavour and started with the noms. The humans didn't like that, so they put the tree back in the box, and put the box back in the car. So: no Christmas tree. Which means no decorations to play with.

Stupid Russell. You're supposed to wait until they aren't looking.

Oh well. I still have my favorite Christmas song. (Can you guess why? Anyone? AJ?)

Day 6: Bah! Humbug!!

So, Tom Flynn of the Council for Secular Humanism thinks that humanists shouldn't celebrate Christmas. Not even under alternate guise as Solstice or Yule or Newtonmas (no word on what he thinks of Happy Monkey). By which he means: no tree, no lights, no gifts (I think you're allowed to eat and drink. Maybe even in excess. Just don't enjoy it.)



Flynn's reason for this Scroogism? Basically, he's trying to make a political statement: that Christmas (notwithstanding its pagan roots and modern commercial accretions) is an irredeemably Christian holiday, and celebrating it sanctions the right-wing Christian assumption of cultural dominance. Not celebrating it makes the statement that there is nothing special about this day; that you have neither interest in nor respect for the myth behind it.

Meh. I see Flynn's point, but methinks he takes himself way too seriously. I assert that there is no unique or unambiguous "meaning" to holidays, especially one as heavily syncretized as Christmas. It means whatever you use it for; there is no other ultimate authority or source of "meaning".

I find his point that Christians, seeing you putting up a tree and exchanging gifts, will assume you are also a Christian, rather weak. In the more secular parts of the world this would be a very foolish inference, and anyway so what if they did? People will always make assumptions (and often they will be wrong) about you based on what you do. It's silly to let other people's hypothetical opinions about you have that much influence on your life -- to do so is to open yourself to the Tyranny of the Busybodies. The fable of The Man, the Boy and the Donkey seems relevant here.

But I think my single biggest source of resistance to Flynn's proposal is this: I refuse to subject all my pleasures and entertainments to some sort of ideological purity test. In fact, that's exactly what I recall fundamentalists doing: Should I see this movie, or is it too immoral? What about dancing? Playing D&D? Don't go to bars -- what if one of your non-Christian friends sees you, and gets the wrong impression of you or Christians? I ditched that whole attitude when I gave up fundamentalism, over 20 years ago. Why the hell would I, as a freethinker, go back there now?

Not that we're actually planning any big celebration this year: about the best I can say is we will not deliberately refrain from celebrating Christmas -- "not bother much" would probably come closest to our holiday plans. I decided several years ago that putting up lights was too much work (like, freezing my fingers while risking my neck up a ladder at what has to be the worst time of year to be up a ladder?). Ditto a Christmas tree (and anyways, the cats would eat it, to their mutual detriment). We've got no plans to go anywhere or see any one, except my older son + GF are coming in for a few days after Christmas. We've got a couple of family birthdays next week, so gifts will change hands in various directions. I booked the next two weeks off work -- which I plan to spend cleaning up the basement and catching up on projects.

And getting that crap done gives me all the good cheer I need!

Day 5 - BUY, BUY, BUY!!! (part 2 - the Christian perspective)

On the new blog of the Centre for Inquiry, Tom Flynn, incoming Exceutive Director for the Center for Secular Humanism, discusses his rationale for why freethinkers should not participate in Christmas celebrations, and in fact should avoid any winter holiday celebrations, lest the evil Christians use examples of this type of participation as evidence that inflates the statistics regarding the pervasiveness of Christianity.

Fortunately, freethinkers tend to be a independent lot, and as one might expect, some are in agreement, but based on the comments, more are of the opinion that people (even, or rather especially freethinkers) should be under no constraints to celebrate or refrain based on some popular guy's say-so. More in depth discussion on this is coming up later in the war - stay tuned.

Meanwhile, one of the comments on the blog is astonishing in its geocentrism and christiocentrism. (Perhaps it is actually a parody, though I have not found any indication to that effect):

What would it be like if [Jesus] hadn’t made the journey? There would be no Christmas - the world would be in a deep economic depression. The millions of people who spend there life making toys and presents would be out of work.

So, we are to believe that Almighty Jahweh sent his only begotten son 2 millenia ago just so there would be enough stuff to buy and sell in order to our keep us from being completely swallowed up by the current depresson. It boggles the mind.

Day 4 - BUY, BUY, BUY!!!11

I've been aware for some time that sales during the Christmas season were very important to retailers. Just *how* important was highlighted recently by a news reporter's statement that most retail establishments don't even start to make money until mid-November. So, if I have this straight: The Canadian and US economies will rise or fall based on the number of people who use money they don't have to buy gifts they can't afford for people they don't like. Somehow, there seems to be something wrong with that arrangement.

Day 3 - the war on salutations

Like Eamon, I have no problem being wished a Merry Christmas, though I tend to respond with "Happy Holidays". I have often seen my (secular Jewish) father offer a hearty "Seasons Greetings", accompanied by a warm handshake.

Here are some other suggestions I have run across lately (most of which are thought-provoking, even if unlikely to catch on as social memes):

"Reason's Greetings"

"Merry Xmas, Ymas, and Zmas" (our family will be celebrating Ymas this year)

"Happy Solstice" (at the risk of being mistaken for a pagan)

and, of course, the American Humanists' "be good for goodness' sake"

12 days of the War on Christmas - a boo and a boon for Pat Boone

The War

Yes, I know that the 12 days of Christmas really starts on Christmas day and goes to Epiphany, but after Boxing Day everybody is sick of Christmas, and cutting over to year-end retrospective mode. (And besides, why should I be bound by the rules around a syncretistic holiday celebrating the mythical birth of the theoretical son of an imaginary god?)

Now, as far as I am concerned the "War on Christmas" is entirely in the imagination of BillO and his cronies. As a matter of fact, when I was a Christian, I thought that the fact that Christmas was embraced by most of the secular western world was a Bad Idea, because it detracted from the actual religious significance of the holiday (more about that later in my "War on Santa Claus" post). But if it is war they want, I'm up for the fight, so for the next 12 days, Eamon, Kizhe and I will be warriors of words in this annually recurring epic battle.

Day One

On the first day of the War on Christmas, I will give a gift to Pat Boone!

In an article in WingNut Daily, Hate is hate, in India or America, Boone complains about protests against California's proposition h8:

The [US] Constitution says nothing about marriage, and shouldn't. Marriage is not a governmental creation; it is a time honored and biblically ordained institution that is subject not to the government but to the will of the people.

Um, ok: If marriage is not a "governmental creation", then it doesn't really belong in legislation at all, does it? So why are people complaining about how changes to broaden the legal definition of marriage affect their personal relationships?

Of course, complaining about stupid things said in WND, and/or stupid things Pat Boone says is like shooting fish in a barrel, but then Boone plays the terrorism link card:

What troubles me so deeply, and should trouble all thinking Americans, is that there is a real, unbroken line between the jihadist savagery in Mumbai and the hedonistic, irresponsible, blindly selfish goals and tactics of our homegrown sexual jihadists

My mind is boggling, so I will let the venerable Charles Babbage speak for me: I am not able rightly to apprehend the confusion of mind that would lead to such a conclusion.

But the Human Rights Campaign has an inspired (if passive-aggressive) tactic in response: People are invited to donate to HRC in Mr Boone's name.

Merry Christmas, Pat.

Merry Newton-mass!

God rest ye merry, physicists
Let nothing you dismay.
Remember Isaac Newton
was born on Christmas Day!
His gravity and calculus and eff equals em-ay!
Oh, pillars of physics and math, physics and math,
Oh, pillars of physics and math!

Baptist declares War on (Dawkins') Christmas

I'm way behind the curve on this one -- PZ and Greg Laden already got in their licks -- but I think I finally figured out just why Albert Mohler has a bug up his butt about Dawkins' celebration of Christmas as a cultural tradition. It's not that Mohler is a "bible-thumping Grinch"(Greg) or has a "smug, ignorant heart"(PZ) (well, not only that).

Basically, it's projection, and an ex-fundy like Your Humble Narrator should remember this. There's a prevalent attitude among fundamentalist Christians that all one's diversions and entertainments should be theologically-correct: they must support (or at least, not contradict) your Christian faith. It comes in varying degrees of course, and not every devout Christian is terminally anal-retentive, but this is where you get the banning and boycotting of Harry Potter (for sorcery) or Pullman (for anti-theism), or any number of other books, movies and TV shows. Ditto Dungeons & Dragons, certain (arbitrarily-chosen) musical genres, and so on. It's also the source of a lot of Christian-themed kitsch -- ordinary knick-knacks sanctified by slapping on a Jesus decal.

Where Mohler, I think, has a problem is in conceiving that there are people in this world who don't feel that way -- we just don't take ourselves and everything we do that neurotically seriously. We can sing songs whose lyrics we don't agree with, but whose melody and harmony we find beautiful (and speaking as a former chorister, I say that anyone -- atheist or Christian -- who tells me my unbelief means I'm forbidden to sing my favorite Christmas carols if I like, is hereby cordially invited to get stuffed), or put up a decorated tree (though we're all too lazy at my house), or observe any number of other little rituals (many of extra-Christian origin anyway) that have syncreted onto this time of year. My agnostic parents -- who, like Dawkins, were "culturally Christian" Brits -- did all that kind of stuff, and I learned my secular Christmas traditions from them, long before I first darkened the door of a church. (Come to think of it, I might even take in a Christmas church service if I damn well feel like it).

But Mohler, apparently, doesn't see any of that. Fine, screw 'im. While he's busy holding his theologically-correct festival, the rest of us are just going have some fun -- in whatever way, and aided by whatever spirit(s), seem best to us.

So: Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays or Really Super-Spiffy Solstice or....ah, hell: have a blast this coming week, with those you love most.

IKEA Treads Middle Ground in War On Christmas

While getting a haircut tonight, I heard the following commercial on whatever radio station the barber shop was playing. From memory:

For those of you who celebrate Christmas, IKEA has five-foot Christmas trees for only $20. For those of you who do not celebrate Christmas, IKEA helps you bring the outdoors indoors with five-foot pine-scented air fresheners, also only $20.

Nice try, Ingvar: everyone knows the Swedes are a bunch of pagans, trying to inflict your Jul festival on the rest of us by stealth....