Comments on: The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas

By: Jasonspsyche

Jasonspsyche — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 07:36:19 +0000

You think being Jewish sucks – at least you have Hanukkah.

Try being a Jehovah’s Witness – we couldn’t even celebrate birthdays!!

Now that I’m an atheist, I’ll celebrate whatever I damn well please, thank you.

By: Sarah Trachtenberg

Sarah Trachtenberg — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 01:12:07 +0000

This Ariane sounds like one awesome character!
If you want to know what’s really sucky, try being Jewish on Christmas (in the US). It’s like everyone else is having a big party and you’re just looking through the window.

By: Sharon Parker

Sharon Parker — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:35:08 +0000

“parents are far more important when explaining to children why they should not steal and kill (and they rarely have to resort to religious reasoning to do it).”

Thanks for making that what-should-be-obvious point. When my kids were little we were still Christians (I would call myself an agnostic now), but it never occurred to me to invoke religion to guide their behavior. Rather, I used simple reasoning (yes, you can reason with very small children, they are capable of understanding much more than they are given credit for), like this:

If you lie and cheat, people won’t trust you and good honest people won’t want to be around you. Do you want to be surrounded by people you can trust, or people who lie to you? What kind of people do you want to be around? What kind of person do you want to be?

It’s not a difficult concept at all for a child to grasp, and my now adult children have many very nice friends and, perhaps more to the point, are loved and welcome in the homes of their friends’ parents.

The problem with any reward-and-punishment approach to child-rearing, whether it employs religion or stickers and time outs, is that it teaches the child to fixate on the reward or the punishment, rather than on the fundamental question, what kind of person do you want to be? What kind of community to you want to live in?

We create our own heaven or hell right here, right now, regardless of what we may or may not believe about supernatural beings and an afterlife. Or Christmas, for that matter, coming back to the original point of this post. I rather enjoy Christmas, but then I don’t go to the malls or the supermarkets (at any time of year), so I don’t encounter the crowds and unpleasantness. I shop at the co-op for food and little independent shops for gifts. It’s all quite pleasant.

Just sayin’.

By: TAM London video 2: Ariane Sherine | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

TAM London video 2: Ariane Sherine | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:02:00 +0000

[...] atheist bus campaign in England, as well as edited the book An Atheist’s Guide to Christmas (to which I contributed an essay on the Star of Bethlehem). I talked with her as things were getting cleaned up after the meeting, so there’s some [...]

By: Alfster

Alfster — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:38:23 +0000

Never liked Christmas. It just makes going shopping more difficult for people.

I really wish in supermarkets, around Christmas, they had ‘athiest only’ tills so I don’t have to wait for 20minutes behind people with enough food feed a nation in their trolleys or baskets when I’ve only got a few things to buy.

By: Dreaming of a right Christmas… for atheists | Atheist Age

Dreaming of a right Christmas… for atheists | Atheist Age — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 02:23:52 +0000

By: TAM London in review | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

TAM London in review | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:31:54 +0000

[...] Ben Goldacre and bad medicine, Ariane Sherine on the atheist bus campaign and her new book, The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas (for which I wrote an essay), and so many more. Professor Richard Wiseman emceed the event, and was [...]