Ho Ho Fucking Ho
 

A Muppet Christmas Carol has aired on UK national TV, which means it's officially Christmas season. Talk about plans, what you've got your family, and rehash the same consumerism vs. humanism arguments we have every year in an attempt to justify this thread's existence for more than 24 hours.

(Zoom for higher res)







And to settle the argument before it starts, this is the best Christmas song.

i haven't got anyone anything yet. friggin Christmas. pah!

also no.

I forgot I have an obligation to buy people crap, my brother is already sorted because the Godspeed You! Black Emperor concert I took him to counted as an early Xmas gift. I can just get my parents booze. I gotta send the girlfriend a card and maybe a little locket or something, other than that....Xmas dinner! Cannot wait.

I'm sculpting two dragons intertwined like ouroboros for my parents because I'm too lazy to do anything else and The Neverending Story is all my mom's been talking about for the past week

Then I'm sending Nep something awesome and that's all I'm doing this year besides binging on candy canes. Best part of the holidays right there. Mother fucking candy canes.

I no longer celebrate Christmas. From now on I only celebrate Cthuletide.

Maybe "celebrate" is the wrong word.

I was actually wondering what atheists are supposed to celebrate? I've been calling it Xmas just because Christmas seems kind of wrong. Do we have our own version of the holiday or do we just call it the same thing as everyone else does?

My entire family is atheist or agnostic and we have always called it Christmas. Our way of celebrating it is pretty traditional: get a tree, decorate it, and throw presents under it assuming we can afford them. We just don't pay any attention to the religious aspects of it because we don't care.

I think the nice thing about Christmas is with the commercialization of it, it's a holiday you don't have to be religious to enjoy, acknowledge, and partake in.

All you need is money and a big appetite!

Well we do all that to, my Dad sometimes goes to Church on Christmas Day; fair enough, he's a Catholic. We do all the decorations and presents and the tree and everything. I was just wondering whether all atheists call it Christmas, which is of course essentially Christ Mass, or whether we have our own noun for it? I'd just be interested if there was since in some respects atheism is still a new thing for me.

Well I mean, atheism is just not believing in a higher power like gods. That's really all there is to it. I've never heard anyone refer to Christmas as anything but Christmas, so if there is another common term for it it would come as news to me. I don't see why anyone religious or otherwise would call it something different.

What a crock of shit!

We call it Christmas and yet we are a non-religious family. It's just tradition. I do write Xmas in a card though mainly because I'm too lazy to write Christmas :tard:

And as for why and what we celebrate. We celebrate just being in a family. The fact we are a family. Meeting up and seeing each other for a day and having a great time. I also see it as celebrating the end of the year because I never do anything for New Years Day.

I still call it christmas. It's what you make of it at the end of the day, doesn't really matter what you call it

I've barely done any shopping. Put some money towards some coal for my parents (ha) and bought a Moogle plush for my boyfriend so far. Also I have no cash!

A lot of atheists keep up their ancestral Jewish traditions and culture. We can certainly keep up some of our Christian heritage too. Even the ones stolen from pagans.

All of these traditions are monstrous hybrids anyway, with multiple complex and interacting roots from many cultures. Associating them fully with the religion that currently claims ownership is an error. So it matters not whether you choose to top your tortuously executed spruce with an angel, the star of Bethlehem, fluffy Paramecium, or a painstakingly crafted Elder Thing.

As Bullet Magnet pointed out, winter solstice celebration has existed since monkeys pointed at the sun and said "Ook ook ook".* If you want to celebrate the ancient Saxon blood you're likely descended from in some way or another, Yule is probably the closest you'll get, but if you want something relevant rather than archaic, I'm afraid you'll have to stick with a dry literal name like "Midwinter" or "Sunbirth" or "Solisurrection". It's against the secular mentality to insist that everyone call it one thing.

There are still people in the world who depend on the favour of the seasons to maintain their lives and livelihoods, and we all depend on them for sustenance, so it's always something to celebrate (even if, like me, you hate summer).

Also, much like Jebediah Springfield Day, the sentiments associated with the holiday are now a lot more widely celebrated (and much more sociopolitically powerful) than the events that we're supposedly commemorating. A day when an entire hemisphere of the Earth put aside their differences to exchange tokens of affection and idle pleasantries is a hell of a thing, even if corporations do see it as an enormous cashgrab. And let's be honest, can you even tell me off the top of your head when World Peace Day is?

So yeah. Here's to the farmers and the foragers, the builders and the brewers, the gardeners and the goatherds. May your winter be merciful, and your spring bountiful.
And here's to the seamstresses and the soldiers, the landlords and the lifeguards, the prisoners and the policemen. May your 25th of December be innocent and uneventful.

* "Hey, that was in the sky longer than it was yesterday!"

Christmas hasn't been a Christian festival for quite some time now, even under that name. I'm kinda looking forward to one day dating a guy over the Christmas season so I can help him decorate a tree. I mean, there's nothing technically stopping me from just doing that myself now, but I just can't bring myself to do it.

Ahem. Yes indeed.


Also...

Speaking objectively, a pine tree covered in shiny things is a great symbol of the perseverance of life through winter and the hope of future productivity.

I really am one of the most festive atheists you'll ever encounter.

Looks like you guys are gonna be waiting a while. Happy Hanukkah!

Well thanks for all the info chaps! Genuinely appreciated.

And Nate, if I'm ever in Australia I'd totally decorate a Christmas tree with you.

can't be arsed with decorations, if i could get away with it i wouldn't bother with presents either, but my human brethren force me to reciprocate as always.

i honestly don't see the point. give me a cavern, a legion of unquestioning servants and the Necronomicon and i'll praise that mighty fat bastard Santa like he was holding my very testicles hostage. i'm not miserable, i just need INSPIRATION

Are you asking me out?

Totally means he'll be putting protection on... with his mouth.

My family is all sorted for and the missus will be getting, hopefully, a HTC One this Christmas. The lovely lady has already bought my gift, here, and even if this is all I get I'll still be a very happy man.

Are you saying no?

This forum is brimming with sexual tension

Don't worry, I'll get rid of it.

Undecided...

I'm on the edge of my seat with anticipation

A couple months ago, I asked Stephanie what her ideal painting would be. While she was high. She described a field with two factions of white, zombie bunny rabbits, with X's for eyes, fighting each other to the death with knives, while an alien watches in disapproval from the clouds. I follow an artist that some others on here also follow on Facebook named Danial Ryan, so I contacted him and ordered a custom painting. It looks like this:

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f3...pse338b585.jpg

I think it's a pretty fucking awesome Christmas present.

Holy shit, this is pretty fucking awesome.

Make sure to tell us if she liked it.

that is pretty cool. just the fact it's a custom job makes it awesome. i want a custom painting.

I wish my camera on my phone wasn't so blurry, but I managed to scuff the hell out of the lens.