The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas (12 page)
Read The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas Online
Authors: Robin Harvie
J
ENNIFER
M
C
C
REIGHT
If there’s one Christmas tradition that both atheists and Christians can get behind, it’s the presents. Sure, cynics on both sides may sneer, claiming that we’re just buying into capitalistic, materialistic manipulation . . . and true, anything that can make people trample each other over a giggling Sesame Street character
should
terrify us all. But can we really ignore the delightful joy that trading presents brings?
Now, I probably don’t have to explain why anyone under the age of eighteen loves getting presents. Even the most humble kid will be happy to play with a new teddy bear, dance to a new CD, or rip open a new pack of Pokémon cards, desperately looking for that Charizard (maybe that last one was just my generation). But even adults love exchanging gifts—and for all but the most profoundly selfish, it eventually becomes less about receiving presents and more about giving them. Despite that warm, fuzzy (and possibly optimistic) thought, there remains one serious problem with secular gift giving:
deciding what gift to buy.
I know what you’re thinking:
everyone
has a hard time figuring out what to buy a person! But do you know how difficult that is when the receiver is an atheist? It immediately rules out a whole slew of holiday gift options. No ornaments (they’re hard to hang on a Festivus pole), no cross necklaces (they irritate the skin of the godless), no cheesy Christmas sweaters (hey, we still have
taste
). Book selection is limited—
Baby’s First December 25
doesn’t exactly have the same ring to it. And don’t even
think
about using that Baby Jesus wrapping paper.
Now, this isn’t to say you can’t buy an atheist
any
religiously themed gifts. The main exception I can think of is a Nativity scene. One man’s representation of the birth of his savior is another man’s new set of action figures. A gift of the Bible may also work, as long as the margins are large enough for note taking. And who knows, maybe your godless buddy takes some ironic delight in collecting religious kitsch. One of the most hilarious Christmas gifts I’ve received was a box of over a hundred Chick tracts. (Thanks, Erin!)
Regardless of your religious belief, you can surely enjoy gifts like toys, MP3 players, and clothes (well, unless they’r
e a wool-linen blend).
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But where is all the explicitly atheist-f
riendly Christmas merchandise? There is a gaping hole in the market that someone should seriously be capitalizing upon. We can read only so many blasphemous books and wear only so much irreverent clothing. Personally, I would have loved for someone to give me some godless toys when I was younger (but not too young; let’s leave indoctrination to the theists).
We’ve stumbled upon a new market, so I have some suggestions for merchandise:
1.
The Deity
Birthday Match Game.
Educational games may not have lasting appeal, but this one can make a great gift if you’re on a budget. Everyone has played match games before: spread out the cards face down, flip two at a time, and keep them face up if you find a matching pair. Here, half of the cards would list deities from different religions, and the other half would list their birthdays. What better way to promote religious literacy than with this lightning-paced, difficult game of chance and memory? Jesus would match with December 25, Attis with December 25, Dionysus with Decembe
r 25, Osiris with December 25, Mithra with December 25 . . . Hm, maybe this game would be a little too easy.
2. Designer-less Legos. If you’re an atheist or even remotely interested in evolutionary biology, you’ve probably heard of the watchmaker analogy. Repeatedly. It’s a teleological argument for the existence of God that basically says, “Something that looks designed must have a designer!” Creationists are so annoyingly persistent with this piece of intellectual laziness that it still pops up in apologetics, even though Richard Dawkins wrote a whole book refuting it almost twenty-five years ago.
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Why do we keep hearing this argument after it’s been given a good thrashing by a number of scientists? One word: Legos! Think about it. Aren’t we just priming children to think design implies a designer if we give them explicit instructions on how to build a space station or dinosaur out of little plastic blocks? Now, Legos were my favorite toy as a child, and I still became a godless evolutionary biologist. But I am merely one data point. Should we really be taking such a risk with our children?
There is an obvious solution. Instead of giving our children physical building blocks, we can give them a computer simulation. The simulation will start with hundreds of the same Lego block, and random blocks will start adding themselves to the piece. Gradually the construction will grow more complex, with the most structurally sound construction propagating its pattern throughout the “population.” Of course, to keep things fun, we don’t have to make reproductive success based on structural soundness. I’m sure we can figure out how to co
de for other selection pressures kids would be interested in, like “awesomeness” and “maximum number of blinking lights.”
Yes, this simulation would take quite a long time to run, and it wouldn’t require any interaction with the user, since that’s not how evolution works. But certainly we atheists can all agree that scientific accuracy must take place over having fun! Hell, we all saw what happened when the game Spore tried to go the fun route: it made biologists weep
and
was dull.
3.
Grayscale crayons.
To represent how atheists view a bleak world devoid of divine purpose and meaning.
4.
Atheist Barbie.
I’ve never been a fan of Barbie. Even though some family members frequently bought her for me in a desperate attempt to get me interested in something girly, Barbie and I just never clicked. Now, as a feminist, I have even more reasons to dislike the doll. But I know there are plenty of girls and boys out there who love Barbie, and who am I to deny them that choice?
So I have a better solution than an outright ban on the buxom beauty. She’s already had every career from ballerina to doctor, from firefighter to computer engineer. It’s time for a Barbie that atheist women can relate to!
Atheist Barbie comes with many different features that represent the everyday life of a female atheist:
I’m not sure how you could ask for a better role model! All we’d need is homosecular gaytheist Ken to be by her side.
Maybe my atheist toy ideas need a little more time to evolve. But until we come up with something better, I guess we can spend a couple more Christmases buying each other books and bumper stickers.
I’m an atheist, and that’s it. I believe there’s nothing we can
know except that we should be kind to one another and do
what we can for other people.
—K
ATHARINE
H
EPBURN
C
HARLIE
B
ROOKER
By any standards, God is a coolly uninvolved sort of character, content to sit back and watch as mankind has one bucket of peril after another tipped over its collective head. He witnesses deaths, disasters, wars, diseases, and the continued existence of Razorlight and doesn’t lift a finger to help, except to whisper murderous instructions into the mind’s ear of the occasional insane truck driver. If he’s truly omnipotent yet refuses to intervene, there must be another reason. Such as laughter.
Phalaris, the mad tyrant of Acragas, who ruled Sicily from 570 to 554
BC
, had a bloodcurdling torture device called the Brazen Bull built for his amusement. It was a hollow bronze bull into which miscreants were placed. Flames heated the bull from below; as it warmed up, its victims were cooked alive. Their agonized screams would travel from the enclosed belly into the bull’s head, where a complex system of pipes and horns mutated each shriek into a comic mooing noise, which would be emitted through the mouth. Phalaris reportedly found this hilarious (although it probably struck him a
s slightly less funny when he was overthrown and tossed into the Brazen Bull himself).
Maybe God shares Phalaris’ sense of humor. Perhaps he finds human suffering funny, much as I find it hilarious when Wile E. Coyote has his head stove in by a plummeting anvil in a
Road Runner
cartoon. Perhaps he’s so detached, our lives are a mere cartoon to him.
After all, if God really is an all-powerful eternal deity, capable of observing the entirety of human history in the blink of an eye, he’d need a jet-black sense of humor just to stay sane. I get depressed after half an hour of Sky News, even on a slow day. If firefighters use gallows humor to defuse the tension after witnessing a tragic house fire, God would require a bulletproof comedic sensibility so sick it would appall Vlad the Impaler.
I’m not saying our human lives are an unending carnival of misery, incidentally. Far from it. We’ve got butterflies, for one thing. They’re nice. Cookies are pretty good too. And we invented the amusement park. All I’m saying is that if God has half the powers attributed to him y
et fails to lend a hand when things inevitably go wrong (which they do from time to time, because it’s a big world: bigger even than Simon Cowell’s garden), if God fails to prevent tsunamis and the like, then he must be getting something out of it. And that something must be laughter.
That would make him cruel. It’s one thing for us mere mortals to laugh at a cartoon wolf being smashed on the noggin, one thing to laugh at a celebrity tumbling on the ice in a reality show, one thing to laugh even at a tasteless joke about a disaster or a famous criminal. But it’s another thing entirely to laugh at something you have the power to prevent. That would be the laugh of a sadist, chuckling at a victim in a cage.
Don’t know about you, but I don’t relish the thought of a heartless, cackling, invincible boss watching over me, mocking my every setback. I’ve seen Gordon Ramsay’s
Kitchen Nightmares
, and I’m thankful the real world isn’t as horrible as that. I don’t believe the boss is there at all. I think we’re all freelancers. We’re all in charge. Which means we should literally work together for the good of the company.
Preferably while laughing more than we currently do. Lift your head. Release the tension in those shoulders. And laugh. Because laughter’s only human. Laughter keeps us in the moment and it keeps us on our toes. Laughter separates us from the gods while binding us closer together. If you’re looking for a miracle, look no further than your most recent belly laugh. Maybe a friend made you clutch your sides till you shook with glee; maybe an old episode of
Frasier
had you howling on the carpet. Either way: in that moment, you were immortal. And that, my friend, is as sacred as it gets.
H
ERMIONE
E
YRE
Perhaps there should be some kind of course you can take in Atheist Assertiveness Training. I mean, there should definitely be a course you can take in Atheist Assertiveness Training. It would be run by someone rather in the mold of Barbara Woodhouse. “Louder,” she would say as we shuffled up and down mumbling about how if it was all right with you we thought church and state should be separate. “And prouder!” she’d shout. “You’d be drowned out in seconds by a Sally Army band. You, in the tracksuit—say you don’t believe like you mean it!” Then we’d hive off in pairs and practice non-aggre
ssive confrontational skills before cooling off to a reading of Nietzsche’s
Ecce Homo
.
Sure, it isn’t going to happen, and that’s partly what I love about atheism: the quiet individualism, the self-reliance, and the lack of enforced singing, organized sanctimony, and bake sales. But then again, it can get lonely out there in splendidly rational isolation. For the active minority, British Humanist Association lectures, campaigns, and meetings supply a sense of community among the godless. But in a general social sense, it’s easy to feel alienated. Often, as with a minor ailment, you need to know someone quite well before you even realize they have atheism. You can begin
a dinner party tirade without knowing if anyone round the table is going to back you up. At a church wedding it can be a surprise to see who else’s head also refuses to bend in prayer; moreover, catching someone’s eye during the Nicene Creed can imply many things besides religious skepticism.
It is hard to know how to—adopt American twang here, please—“self-identify” as an atheist. Fittingly for a once dangerous belief, it does not readily announce itself. Public burnings, dismissals from university, and so on have tended to disincentivize ostentatious displays of atheism over the years, and besides, freethinkers naturally mistrust uniforms. We don’t want to conform to wearing our hair a certain way or adopting a vestigial hat. We have no symbolic trinkets, no Sikh
kara
s or Catholic rosaries; no arcane taboos, no dietary requirements, no cult pronouncements. How good it is
to be free of these trappings; yet sometimes, without any rituals to observe or outward signs to flaunt, I find that my deeply held beliefs can fe
el insubstantial as air. I am not proud of this, but a small, atavistic part of me feels the lack of a badge or banner. These age-old urges die hard.
But to show our solidarity by wearing a regulation
GOD IS DEAD
T-shirt or an overpriced piece of string around the wrist would be wrong, wrong, wrong—and lazy. When you raise a totem you agree to be bound to whatever it symbolizes; you surrender independent thought. Better, surely, to express your atheism through a thousand rational acts; through constant low-level social vigilance; through countless tiny words and deeds.
As a movement, we rightly resist banding together—even writing “we” makes me feel a little coy—but we are never going to progress unless we’re more vocal. I don’t mean in the media, where atheism is well represented, but socially, randomly, impulsively.
It isn’t easy being volubly atheist. We want to help spread the advantages of secular life, yet we don’t want to evangelize. All too often these impulses cancel each other out and we end up doing or saying nothing. The non-believer has to learn how to pick a battle worth fighting—he or she has to discriminate between what is forthright, what is hectoring, and what is downright rude. It should be possible, after all, to be bravely and publicly atheist and still receive party invitations. Likewise, non-believers should be able to express themselves honestly and still have a happy family Chri
stmas. Here are some worked examples of typically challenging situations:
1. A Jehovah’s Witness rings your doorbell, saying, “Can I give you some literature about the Holy Bible?” Do you reply:
(a) “Thanks, but I’ve got a bath running!”
(b) “I don’t believe in God. Can I give you some literature about humanism instead? Okay then, swaps?”
(c) “Did they get you very young?”
2. While you are waiting to visit St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome (just for the art, naturally), some devout children wearing mantillas push in front of you in the queue. Do you:
(a) Say loudly, “Did you know some people don’t believe in queue barging?”
(b) Say loudly, “Did you know some people don’t believe in God?”
(c) Shout, “You need emancipating!” and try to remove their mantillas.
3. A friend’s friend asks, in a voice that implies you are deeply shallow: “But do you really not believe in anything bigger than yourself? Do you have no spirituality at all?” Do you:
(a) Simperingly say, “No but I believe in, you know, art
and people, and books, and nature . . . And I cried at the opera last week.”
(b) Laugh and say, “Who are you, Angelina Jolie?”
(c) Say coldly, with slightly crossed eyes: “When you die you will rot and nothing of your ego will remain.”
4. When a nurse remarks, “Maybe God will give her a baby!” about a mutual friend, do you:
(a) Laugh nervously, give up, and say, “Maybe!”
(b) Say, “Maybe she’ll use contraception so she can decide when she’s ready to give the baby the best start in life.” (This is a point of view, after all, that a nurse ought to consider.)
(c) Snort and make the same point about contraception, followed by: “And it’s wicked the pope doesn’t let mothers in the developing world do the same.” (Admirably bold though this is, she is a nurse, not an NGO.)
5. Your great-grandma asks you to drive her and your small cousins to midnight mass at Christmas. You are, apparently, the only person who is free and able. Do you:
(a) Concede graciously, take communion to please Granny, and keep your thoughts to yourself for once.
(b) Concede graciously, politely refuse communion but participate in the service with the calm, detached interest of an anthropologist, and then make some jolly conversation about the pagan roots of Christmas in the car.
(c) Drive them there scowlingly and spend the service sitting o
utside in the car listening to Kraftwerk and revving the engine.
You have now completed your Non-Aggressive Atheism Pop Quiz. Its purpose was, of course, not to moderate your convictions, simply their expression.
If you answered mainly (a): You need to crank it up, otherwise people are going to start mistaking you for an agnostic. Shudder.
If you answered mainly (c): You’re wonderfully zealous, but please, stay away from me.
If you answered mainly (b): Congratulations—you’re tactful, you’re frank, and you may just save the world.
