Tag Archives: political correctness

If you are in the USA, it is difficult to go anywhere without hearing about Christmas.  Now I am interested in how you as an atheist or your atheist friends handle this time of year.  I fully celebrate this time of year not because of the religious side of Christmas but because it brings family together in order to create new memories.  Now I have family that absolutely despises my being an atheist  but in an effort to be supportive of what they believe to be a special event; I do allow my kids to participate in whole Jesus born in the manger play.  This allows some of my family to feel that they are being included into my kid’s lives and passing on some traditions.  For me it allows them to become exposed to a dogma that I then can explain to exist only as a make-believe story and then I impart this to them, mostly my daughter as she is just old enough to grasp the concepts of contradictions, make-believe and storytelling.  Now she likes the plays and she likes the singing because they are fun.  When she does bring up certain questions I do answer them by showing her the text and all the contradictions along with the known historical aspects in an age appropriate manner.  Now my son is still too young to really grasp much other than he likes getting dressed up, being the center of attention and feels that a Sheppard should always be armed with a snake.  As snakes are scary and will keep anyone away from his sheep.

Now we celebrate Santa Claus and commercialism mostly but we do have certain family that really want the children in some religious celebration aspects.  The question is do you keep them from religion in any form or do you expose them and arm them with critical skills and skepticism.  I actually think it is the latter.

So let me know how you handle religion/atheism issues within your family particular during holidays such as Christmas/Winter Solstice and what is your course of action with your children.