Religious holidays being celebrated, but not believed.
I don't know if there are (m)any other atheists like me out here. I have a bit of a different take on holidays and wonder how others are.
I'm fairly militant in my atheist beliefs, in the sense that I see religious belief as a clear blocker to progress and would like nothing more than for humanity to evolve past it.
However, I think religion can still be celebrated. For example, I celebrate Christmas. It's one of my favorite times of the year in fact. With that said, I'm certainly not celebrating the birth of Jesus at that time and I probably have a better historical understanding of the holiday than most "christians" do. Xmas (to me) is Yule, solstice, New Years, secular christmas (santa, presents, lights, etc.), Saturnalia, and a ton of other Pagan holidays throughout history.
Whatever it's been called, humans have celebrated and feasted around the darkest days of the year for tens of thousands of years. For the majority of our history we weren't assured of making it through the winter, but as we gained knowledge and technology, from fire to farming to animal breeding our ancestors learned how to make it through harsh winters and we wouldn't be here without them.
Many of these celebrations, and traditions that continue today in various forms, like songs, feasting or fires and lights were basically a form of our ancestors thumbing their noses at the darkness and the cold. Fatalistically celebrating in the face of an unknown winter they might not survive.
I, as a complete non-believer and atheist, find it fascinating and worthy of celebration to still honor our ancestors and "connect" ourselves to them with similar celebrations today. I even recognize the part that the christian christmas plays in this and personally will even sometimes visit church productions, or listen to mire religious music at this time.
With that said, Christmas as we know it, was never really meant to be a "Jesus" holiday and ironically the "war on christmas" for the majority of the centuries has come from church leaders whom wanted a somber honoring of Christ. Little today, other than midnight mass came from christianity.
So, to get to my point. What I want to see is for religion to get to a point where it can be celebrated, even honored, as a symbol of our past, in the same way most of us might think about Greek mythology or native American myth.
I realize we are a long way off from this and i sometimes struggle with wondering if my support of the holiday hinders the long slow process of our species evolving past the need for religion. But i've also come to accept that I can't be held responsible for the stupidity of the rest of the world. I have a historical and anthropological fascination with religion and tradition and I shouldn't make apologies for that.
Just curious if there are any other atheists here with similar thoughts.
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