I love Christmas. I’m an atheist.
One of my relatives issues annual tirades against “Happy Holidays.” It’s “Merry Christmas!” he insists. His Facebook posts almost vibrate with anger on the screen as he scorns the political correctness that he and many others believe dilutes the Christian spirit of the season. He’s right about “Merry Christmas,” but for the wrong reasons.
I have nothing against “Happy Holidays.” The generous spirit of inclusion is better than giving intentional or inadvertent offense. But today, Christmas Eve, seems a fine time to proclaim “Merry Christmas” a universal greeting of peace and love.
After all, if anyone were to take offense to “Merry Christmas,” an atheist like I might claim first rights. And I don’t. When greeted with “Merry Christmas!” I do not react as though the words are intended to convert me to Christianity or that they are an offensive presumption, subsuming me into a religion that I don’t embrace. Having lived in New York City for 19 years, I can’t even estimate how many atheists, Muslims and Jews wished me a “Merry Christmas” knowing that I am not a Christian. And I happily returned the greeting.
As any modest understanding of religion reveals, Jesus is an important historic figure in Islam and Judaism as well as Christianity. It is only the subsequent competitive mythologizing that ruined it all. But if Jesus cared for the poor, lived and died on principle, and was a social justice warrior several thousand years before the phrase became a political pejorative, I’m all in for Jesus. And even if it’s just a story, fabricated and embellished over the millennia, what a lovely story it is!
I don’t intend to steal Christmas from the Christians. We can share it. But we all — Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics, pagans, witches — can take it back from Amazon.com and the automobile companies. I hope one thing we can all agree on is that Christmas is not best understood in terms of a Lexus in the driveway.
Since childhood, I’ve experienced Christmas with a deep, profound secular reverence. Music associated with Christmas is particularly powerful, from Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio to the simple traditional carols that we sing in our schools, churches and homes. Silent Night, Away in a Manger,O Little Town of Bethlehem, Joy to the World, Oh Christmas Tree, A Coventry Carol … even the more recent Little Drummer Boy or Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer evoke wonderful, often deeply spiritual feelings.
Many years ago, I was invited by a priest friend to play carols on the violin in an old German church in Cleveland on Christmas Eve. He knew I was not a “believer” in the Christian sense but he also knew I believed what mattered: that peace and love are the messages of the season, conveyed by music as well as by word. The church was lit by candles in sconces and nestled in the branches of a beautiful tree. I’ve seldom felt closer to the God I don’t believe in.
Every year, my wife and I escape the frenzy for at least a while, sitting in front of our tree, listening to carols and allowing the joyful ghosts of all our Christmases past to revisit. Every year, whether with family or just as a pair, we end Christmas Eve with Dylan Thomas reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales. On this, our 48th Christmas together, Miss Prothero and the firemen will make us laugh and we will try to remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when we were 12, or snowed for 12 days and 12 nights when we were 6.
I don’t mean to secularize Christmas for those of you who hold deep faith. My embrace of Christmas does not negate your faith. But I have never allowed the Christian embrace of Christmas to negate my love of the season either. If we have to tolerate four months of excessive commercialism together, we can all experience Christmas together with triumphant joy.
As Jackie DeShannon and Dionne Warwick sang more than 50 years ago. “What the world needs now, is love sweet love. That’s the only thing that there’s just too little of … No, not just for some, but for everyone.”
Merry Christmas!
Steve Nelson lives in Boulder, Colo., and Sharon. He can be reached at stevehutnelson@gmail.com.