An Atheist answer of what to say to, "What do YOU have to celebrate on Christmas?"

[Spitfire of ATJ]

This is usually asked by some RW FOX "News" viewing "Christian" trying to start an argument.

Your answer, "Peace on Earth".

It's the one day out of the year when it is traditional for armies to have a cease fire.

During WWI in the trenches the two sides got together and shared whatever booze and smokes they had and the next day they went back to trying to kill each other.

The GOAL is for EVERY DAY to be like that.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Absolutely right!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

2. I was going to do this post next month but some folks may need it for family on Thanksgiving.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. Your timing is great; this is needed for both holidays.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

4. We have someone flying in tomorrow to stay for a week.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

5. Good luck and have a great visit!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

6. I may need it. The guy is a Jack Van Impe fan.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

8. I'm not familiar with Jack Van Impe. I assume he's bad news...

The picture sure looks like it!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

9. Jack Van Impe and his wife are a MAJOR Right Wing circus act...

They use stories from World Net Daily and Newsmax and mix them with Bible verses to push their "Jesus is coming any day now" narrative.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

10. Oh, no...that's awful.

I loathe anyone who does that. It is such a CROCK.

Well, good luck!

[Major Nikon]

16. Does the war on X-mas start on Thursday or Friday?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

22. Already begun...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3967639

[Major Nikon]

44. I'm late! Fetch my battle gear!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

46. BFEG....

[Tuesday Afternoon]

7. DU Rec

for Peace on Earth ~ Goodwill to All

[cemaphonic]

11. my mother-in-law celebrates the solstice

She's a nonobservant Jew who hates the short winter days in the northwest, so it works for her.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

15. That three days is kind of a trip.

[Vashta Nerada]

12. I would say "Getting shit I don't need."

That's the whole point of christmas now, consumerism, receiving gifts, and being ungrateful when you don't get what you wanted.

The whole "it's jesus's birthday" excuse is lame. The meaning of christmas has been lost for a few decades now.

[Major Nikon]

13. The correct answer is, "You first"

Because if their answer is the birth of baby Jesus, they got it wrong.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

14. Nitpicker. >;-)

[Orrex]

17. I like to celebrate creche fights.

[antiquie]

20. Better than family fights.

[LionsTigersRedWings]

18. That's perfect!

I will definitely use that!

[PassingFair]

19. My mother got a little tipsy and full of herself one year....

at Thanksgiving dinner at my house.

She told my two daughters that they wouldn't be getting presents from her for Christmas, because they
"...didn't believe in anything."

She thought she was being funny and edgy, but her words kinda flopped out on the table and started to stink.
I told her that while they didn't believe in prophecies or virgin births, that they DID believe in presents, and, at least until now, believed
that their Grandmother LOVED them.

It hasn't happened again since, and she later apologized for blurting that out in front of everybody.
Of her five children, only one of us have any god beliefs and I think she was feeling a bit cocky and angry that we didn't say
grace or get all "goddy". If she wants prayers, she can go to church! When she comes to my house for Thanksgiving, she gets TURKEY!!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

24. Saying grace leads to misunderstandings....

[pipi_k]

21. My thought on that is

that I can't celebrate something that doesn't exist.

I can hope for peace on earth, yes. But as far as celebrating it...no. I'll celebrate if and when it's a fact.


What I do celebrate, as an Atheist (and a person with SAD), is the return of the sun as it crosses the Winter Solstice and begins its journey (in a manner of speaking) to the northern hemisphere.

For me, it really is the Season of Light. I hate Christmas, but love seeing the pretty lights.

[Grey]

23. ^^ Agree^^

[Spitfire of ATJ]

25. You don't get it. This is ammo to throw in their smug faces.

[FBaggins]

26. Doesn't seem like very effective ammo.

What do you do when they point out WHY they stopped killing each other that cold night in 1914?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

28. Easy. Our common humanity that trumps politics....

FOX "News" is teaching these thugs that WE are the ones on the attack and THEY are "the noble defenders of what's right and good".

Refuse to play by their rules and strip them of their "hero" status.

[FBaggins]

32. What does that have to do with it?

Refuse to play by their rules and strip them of their "hero" status.

And my point is that you just "played by their rules" by playing into their hands.

You're trying to imply that Christmas is a time of "peace on earth"... while ignoring that the example you used specifically supports the alternative position. There was only a peace on that night because soldiers on both sides were celebrating someone they considered the "Prince of Peace".

Christmas isn't universally a time of peace anyway. It only is for parts of the world where christianity has had at least a cultural influence.

If you insist on answering smugness with smugness of your own... then perhaps you could say "because it's the one time of year that some of you act the way we should be acting all year long". "They" can't shoot that down... because it happens to be true from their perspective as well.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

33. Come on. It's easy to get them to show their hate.

[FBaggins]

39. Easy on both sides apparently.

So much for peace on earth, eh?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

42. Beats this...

[pipi_k]

49. I don't need

to throw ammo in anyone's face, really.

Don't want to...

[Spitfire of ATJ]

50. Then think of it as neutralizing their ammo.

[pipi_k]

53. Meh...

I don't have to do that, either.

Mainly because I don't really discuss my political or religious beliefs (or non-beliefs) with other people.

If nobody knows what I think, they have no ammo to "fire" at me. I like it that way.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

54. Hell, I've gotten applause at parties for knocking an O'Reilly fan blowhard down to size....

From his wife too.

[hunter]

27. When I was a kid Christmas was a time of family warfare...

...especially when my mom was a Jehovah's Witness. (JW's don't do Christmas, they say it's a pagan celebration, and they are correct.)

But the Witnesses rejected my mom because she couldn't stay away from politics and God had told her directly some things which contradicted JW teachings. So our family ended up Quaker. At meetings my mom could say what she needed to say, people would listen respectfully and move on. That did not happen in other churches... in some they'd tell her to leave. We learned who the church "bouncers" were a few times.

I can laugh now...

When my wife and I got married I was worried my mom or her mom (my crazy grandma) would make a scene at our very Catholic wedding, but they did not, it went very well, except my dad's dad did not attend because he was still uncomfortable that I was marrying (in his words) "a Mexican girl." He got over that.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

30. The Right in this country have gotten so crazy they would object to her being French.

[sakabatou]

29. What do I have to celebrate? My health.

I nearly died 7 years ago in December.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

35. Ouch. I knew someone with a similar story only it was Easter. She was 5'6" and got down to 85 lbs.

[sakabatou]

36. I got hit with meningitis

[Spitfire of ATJ]

37. How are you now?

[sakabatou]

40. I still suffer from seizures

But I don't have any big ones save... twice a year (medication helps).

[Spitfire of ATJ]

41. Are they waking or nocturnal?

[sakabatou]

43. Waking, as far as I know.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

45. I know someone who was recently on a wifi EEG home monitor for three days.

[sakabatou]

51. I wonder how the tech has changed since '06

[Spitfire of ATJ]

52. They were able to monitor her long term from home....

Tech like that was designed to get you out so they could move on to the next patient.

[sakabatou]

55. I was wired to my bed and monitoring device

I could only go so far until they decabeled me.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

56. She was able to move all around at least. Sleeping is still tough with the pins and wires.

[sakabatou]

57. Tell me about it.

If only I had that tech back then.

[struggle4progress]

31. +

[Bucky]

34. The Christmas Truce was a little more complicated than that.

There were dozens of spontaneous ceasefires among enlisted troops along the Western Front in 1914 (and a few isolated events in Easter and Xmas 1915). One of the causes of this was the fact that on both sides, there were very few officers in the front trenches to get the troops out the NML, there being a sort of unspoken agreement among the commanders on both sides not to attack during Christmas. Most of the "truces" started as shouted agreements across the NML not to shoot while bodies of dead buddies were recovered, then slowly evolved into soccer games, and ultimately into swapped scotches and schnappes.

When the respective HQs learned of the fratrinization, the officers quickly returned to the fronts to reestablish order, but quite a few units refused to cooperate. There were court-martials threatened on both sides while generals nervously fretted that peace might actually sweep across all the units, leaving them vulnerable to the enemy. It took more than a week to settle down the truce movement and several weeks before officers would order resumption of full hostilities.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

38. Ain't politics great?

[eShirl]

47. I celebrate that daylight is finally getting longer again.

[Incitatus]

48. I celebrate it as a time to spend with my family.

And be thankful that fundamentalists haven't cause the end of humanity with a religious war.