Christmas the Secular, Christmas the American

Is it appropriate for non-Christian Americans to celebrate Christmas? Many do, and why not? I’m an atheist—or, more precisely, a person of reason—and I have no problem celebrating Christmas, even though it has no religious significance for me.

Christmas is obviously a religious holiday for many, signifying the birth of the Christian icon Jesus Christ. But as an American holiday, Christmas is and, by our own Constitution, a secular holiday. That makes it a holiday for everyone. Therefore, people are free to celebrate Christmas according to any meaning they choose.

Why do I say that? Two reasons—one moral, one Constitutional.

I am indebted to philosopher Ayn Rand for showing that, philosophically, in America, Christmas can’t be strictly a Christian holiday. In answer to the question of whether it is appropriate for an atheist to celebrate Christmas, Rand observed:

Yes, of course. A national holiday, in this country, cannot have an exclusively religious meaning. The secular meaning of the Christmas holiday is wider than the tenets of any particular religion: it is good will toward men—a frame of mind which is not the exclusive property… of the Christian religion.

This makes perfect sense. Neither Christianity nor any particular religion can have an exclusive claim on morality. “Good will toward men” is not a monopoly of Christianity. Rand’s reference to the National Holiday aspect of Christmas points to another important reason why Christmas in America cannot be the exclusive domain of Christianity, or of religion more generally.

Here, I am also indebted to the framers of the U.S. Constitution. As the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." In 1870, Congress made Christmas a national legal holiday. This means that anyone who claims, as one NJ letter-to-the-editor wrote, that Without Jesus Christ you can't have Christmas, that person is repudiating the U.S. Constitution. A national religious holiday in a secular nation founded on the principle of separation of church and state (freedom of religion and conscience) is a logical impossibility. Since to have a secular government means to have one that is neutral with regards to the fundamental conscientious beliefs of all of its citizens, an American national holiday by definition cannot be religious.

In fact, what we today call Christmas originally didn't have any connection to Jesus at all, writes Onkar Ghate in U.S.News & World Report:

Before Christians co-opted the holiday in the fourth century (there is no reason to believe Jesus was born in December), it was a pagan celebration of the winter solstice, of the days beginning to grow longer. The Northern European tradition of bringing evergreens indoors, for instance, was a reminder that life and production were soon to return to the now frozen earth.

The Romans celebrated the Winter Solstice with the holiday Saturnalia. In Northern Europe, the holiday was called Yule.

Indeed, as philosopher Leonard Peikoff observes over at Capitalism Magazine, the leading secular Christmas symbol - Santa Claus - actually contradicts some standard Christian tenets:

Santa Claus is a thoroughly American invention. ... In 1822, an American named Clement Clarke Moore wrote a poem about a visit from St. Nick. It was Moore (and a few other New Yorkers) who invented St. Nick's physical appearance and personality, came up with the idea that Santa travels on Christmas Eve in a sleigh pulled by reindeer, comes down the chimney, stuffs toys in the kids' stockings, then goes back to the North Pole.

...Santa implicitly rejected the whole Christian ethics. He did not denounce the rich and demand that they give everything to the poor; on the contrary, he gave gifts to rich and poor children alike. Nor is Santa a champion of Christian mercy or unconditional love. On the contrary, he is for justice -- Santa gives only to good children, not to bad ones.

When Congress declared Christmas a National Holiday, in 1870, Christmas ceased being a strictly religious observance and became a secular holiday. A legal religious holiday in a nation dedicated to freedom of religion and conscience is a contradiction. (The Founders used the terms “religion” and conscience” interchangeably. They understood religious freedom to include the freedom not to believe in or practice any religion—in effect, not just freedom of religion, but freedom from religion as well; i.e. separation of religion and state.) Being a national legal holiday, Christmas can have non-religious, non-Christian meaning just as validly as a Christian meaning. It’s a matter of individual preference. Otherwise, what’s the point of freedom of conscience?

So, regardless of your personal beliefs, go ahead and enjoy Christmas on your own terms.

On that note, let me extend to everyone a hearty wish for a joyous, safe, and thoroughly non-contradictory…

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Related Reading:

How the Welfare State Stole Christmas, by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins

Don't Need Christ to Celebrate Christmas

Why Christmas Should be More Commercial—Leonard Peikoff

The Real Meaning of Christmas: What Would Jesus Teach Today?

A ‘War on Christmas?’ No: A War on non-Christians

QUORA: ‘Wouldn’t Heaven literally be Hell? Imagine living forever and ever and ever . . .?

QUORA: ‘Wouldn’t Heaven literally be Hell? Imagine living forever and ever and ever and you can’t do anything to stop it… Wouldn’t you go mentally crazy at some point?’

I posted this answer:

This question struck a chord with me, primarily because I am a Twilight Zone fan. The Twilight Zone’s creator, Rod Serling, was a master at concretizing abstract ideas through very  interesting, captivating entertainment. And Serling dealt with this very question, in slightly expanded fashion, in the episode A Nice Place to Visit.

[WARNING—PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD]

In this episode, a two-bit thief with a history of bad behavior dating back to his childhood, Henry Valentine, nicknamed Rocky, is shot and killed by police during a gunfight. He awakens to who he thinks is his guardian angel standing over him. The “angel,” identified only as Mr. Pip, announces that his job is to grant Mr. Valentine his every desire on demand, be it beautiful women, wads of money, great food, winning at gambling, or even the chance of getting caught robbing a bank or losing occasionally at the craps table—anything, at any time, all pre-arranged by Mr. Pip.

Rocky, initially ecstatic, soon tires and grows increasingly frustrated of getting everything he wants, when he wants, without any chance of losing or failing. Without the challenge, Rocky muses to Mr. Pip, “It’s not the same.” Toward the end of the episode, Rocky tells Mr. Pip that eternally getting every desire provided at will does not provide satisfaction, but instead will make him “go nuts.” He tells Mr. Pip that heaven is not for him, that maybe he belongs in “the other place.” To which Mr. Pip declares, through a demonic laughter, “Whatever gave you the idea you were in Heaven . . .? This is the other place!”

I am an atheist. But I’ve often wondered about religionists’ promises that if you lived a virtuous life—by their standard—you would be rewarded after death with a trip to heaven, where you will live in eternal happiness. Happiness without effort . . . eternally . . . “forever and ever and ever,” as the questioner so succinctly puts it. That prospect always sounded hellish to me. 

Maybe it is Hell—”the other place”—and the joke is on us. Given that religious ethics commands us to put the happiness of others above our own as the price of getting into Heaven, maybe real virtue means working to achieve our own personal happiness through honorable means.

Have a watch of A Nice Place to Visit

SCOTUS Attacks Religious Freedom

Joe Kennedy, a coach at Bremerton High School, began praying on the field during school events. The Washington State public school district warned him several times to stop the public prayers because it feared that Kennedy’s actions violated the Constitution’s ban on government Establishment of Religion. 

Eventually, Kennedy lost his job, and sued the district. The case, Kennedy vs. Bremerton School District, ultimately went to the Supreme Court. In a clear violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, the SCOTUS ruled in favor of Kennedy.

The rationale for the SCOTUS ruling is that Kennedy’s actions are protected by freedom of speech. As Scott Shackford reports for Reason,

In a 6–3 decision, the Court determined that Joseph Kennedy, a former assistant coach at Bremerton High School in Washington state, was within his First Amendment rights and not acting in his capacity as a school official when he prayed on the 50-yard line at football games and permitted others (including students) to join him. As such, Kennedy was not causing the school to violate the Establishment Clause and endorse a particular religion.

The majority decision for Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Amy Coney Barrett, and Brett Kavanaugh, leans heavily on evidence and statements that no student was coerced or ever said they felt coerced to participate in these postgame prayers. Gorsuch observes that it doesn't appear that the method that Kennedy engaged in prayer caused anybody to feel as though he were pushing his religion on students as a coach

But Justice Sonya Sotomayor easily demolishes this argument. As The MORNING DISPATCH reported on 7/6/22: 

In her dissent, Sotomayor argued that context—much of which was absent from Gorsuch’s majority opinion—was necessary to reach the correct conclusion in the case. “Properly understood, this case is not about the limits on an individual’s ability to engage in private prayer at work,” she wrote. “This case is about whether a school district is required to allow one of its employees to incorporate a public, communicative display of the employee’s personal religious beliefs into a school event, where that display is recognizable as part of a longstanding practice of the employee ministering religion to students as the public watched.”

Sotomayor’s dissent also focused on the power dynamics at play in the situation at hand. “Students face immense social pressure,” she wrote, even if they aren’t pushed to join prayers or punished for skipping them. “Students look up to their teachers and coaches as role models and seek their approval. Students also depend on this approval for tangible benefits … from extra playing time to a stronger letter of recommendation to additional support in college athletic recruiting.”

[My emphasis]

I would add that, among those tangible benefits is grades. It’s easy to see that a student may fear lower grades if she doesn’t go along with her teacher’s religious exercise. Regardless of whether there is any overt evidence in this particular case of a student being punished for not participating, the power that teachers have over students’ educational outcomes can easily foster covert forms of punishment, or fear thereof.

Here are my FB comments that accompanied my share of Supreme Court rules for coach whose prayers on field raised church-state questions.  Quoting from the article, I wrote:

"The 6-3 decision is a victory for those who seek a larger role for prayer and religion in public schools."

And it is a terrible defeat for freedom of conscience and religious liberty.

For the 2nd time in a week, the SCOTUS shredded the Constitution*, demonstrating once again the Conservatives' willingness to ignore the clear language of the Constitution when it suits their purposes.

Unlike the recent decision which affirmed the right of a Maine parent acting as a private citizen to choose a private religious school with her child's allotted education tax dollars, this incident involved a government employee acting in his official capacity at a government school function of a government school.

This is not a freedom of religion or freedom of speech issue, as the Conservative majority imagines. It is neither. The Conservative majority flippantly brushed aside the very first line of the First Amendment, which explicitly protects us FROM religion—"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion". This coach didn't privately pray. He made it a public demonstration, at a public school event, as a public school employee, thus implying the imprimatur of the state and carrying the power of a law sanctioning an establishment of religion.

There is no conflict among the first 3 phrases of the First Amendment—"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech . . ."—when you draw a bright line between government and private function. Of course, the root of the problem is government schooling. These conflicts would vanish if we amended the First Amendment to add "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of education, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" and privatized all public schools—the complete Separation of Education and State.

* [The first time being the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Here is my Facebook post on the ruling.]

Related Reading: 

Separation of Church (or Education) and State

Why We Need the Separation of Education and State

Freedom Of Religion Demands Freedom From Religion

On Religion, The First Amendment Works Both Ways

Freedom Of Religion Demands Freedom From Religion

My Commentary on Church-State Separation

My Quick Take on 'Opposing Views: Is Climate Change A Problem?'

I just watched Opposing Views: Is Climate Change A Problem? | Alex Epstein & Dr. Andrew Dessler. This is not a debate. It is two separate interviews. And this episode features one of the most dramatically opposing viewpoint presentations I’ve ever seen. Mikhaila Peterson really draws out the essences of the pro-catastrophe versus the pro-human sides of the climate change debate (which is at bottom an energy and political debate).

Here is my quick, though incomplete, take on the episode. But you’ll get the picture:

When someone says, “Just look out the window” to “see” climate change—let alone a “climate crisis”—you know you’re dealing with religion, not science. Just as a religionist can “see” God in anything, so the climate catastrophist can “see” climate change.

When every bad weather event is “evidence” of catastrophic climate change, you know you’re dealing with dogmatism. 

When fossil fuel companies are demonized, but the fossil fuel consumers who willingly buy their products are let off the hook, you know your dealing with injustice and bias. 

When all of the damage caused by extreme weather is labeled a cost of fossil fuel use and a subsidy for fossil fuel companies, even though storms, fires, heat waves, cold waves, et al have always occurred, you know your dealing with dishonesty. 

When the wild swings of climate over the recent past—well documented by Brian Fagan in The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850, which actually covers the multi-century Medieval Warm Period that came before the Little Ice Age—are ignored, you know that you’re dealing with historical white-washing. 

When someone tells you that “the free market won’t work” after the free markets unleashed by the Enlightenment gave us The Great Enrichment, including the ability to vastly increase man’s safety from climate dangers, you know your dealing with a statist who is not concerned with the voluntary choices or well-being of average people.

Dressler’s panic-mongering assertions and “renewable” energy pie-in-the sky propaganda are not much different from what I get from my daily newspapers. Epstein is a breath of fresh air, offering the needed balance, objectivity, and moral clarity. And there are others worth consulting. In addition to Epstein, you can turn to such experts as Pielke Jr, Koonan, Shellenberger, Lomborg, Bailey, Bryce, and Moore, to name a few. I wonder if Dressler’s students are getting the opposing view. They’re probably leaving his classroom with an irrational dread of the future, and being panicked into voting for authoritarianism, at a time when the planet has never been more hospitable for human flourishing, and the future is the brightest young people have ever faced, albeit not without threats from the likes of Environmentalism, socialism, egalitarianism, Wokism, and other anti-human isms. These students are victims of educational malpractice.

 

The points I touch on will be clarified when you watch Opposing Views: Is Climate Change A Problem? | Alex Epstein & Dr. Andrew Dessler. One note: Epstein was interviewed after Dressler, even though Epstein is presented first.

Here is a list of books that anyone who wants to get past the quasi-coordinated efforts by the political/media/crony businessEnvironmentalist complex to convince us that the end of the world is rushing toward us and the only way to avoid the coming catastrophe is to grant the catastrophists totalitarian powers to direct our lives:  

Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas--Not Less by Alex Epstein

The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-First Century by Ronald Bailey 

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress -- Steven Pinker

Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom by Patrick Moore

Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us by Michael Shellenberger 

False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet by Bjorn Lomborg 

The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters & Climate Change by Roger Pielke Jr. 

Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters by Steven E. Koonin  

State of Fear by Michael Crichton 

The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels by Alex Epstein  

A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations by Robert Bryce  

Related Reading:

New U.N. Study Shows Climate Catastrophists Getting More Open About their Totalitarian Designs

‘Climate Crisis’: The Dem’s Path to Totalitarian Socialism

The 'Watermelon' Analogy is Real, and it is Dangerous

Environmentalists, Luddites, and Collectivism

Paris Climate Agreement Adopted: New Central Plan for the World’s Economy and Climate—Ronald Bailey for Reason.com

Christmas the Secular, Christmas the American

Can non-Christians celebrate Christmas? Many do, and why not? I’m an atheist and I have no problem celebrating Christmas, even though it has no religious significance for me.

Christmas is a religious holiday for many, signifying the birth of the Christian icon Jesus. But as an American holiday, Christmas is and, by our own Constitution, a secular holiday. That makes it a holiday for everyone. People are free to celebrate Christmas according to any meaning they choose.

But this goes beyond the Constitution. I am indebted to philosopher Ayn Rand for showing that, philosophically, Christmas can’t be strictly a Christian holiday. In answer to the question of whether it is appropriate for an atheist to celebrate Christmas, Rand observed:

Yes, of course. A national holiday, in this country, cannot have an exclusively religious meaning. The secular meaning of the Christmas holiday is wider than the tenets of any particular religion: it is good will toward men—a frame of mind which is not the exclusive property… of the Christian religion.

This makes perfect sense. Neither Christianity nor any particular religion can have an exclusive claim on morality. “Good will toward men” is not a monopoly of Christianity.

I am also indebted to the framers of the U.S. Constitution. As the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." In 1870, Congress made Christmas a national holiday. This means that anyone who claims, as one NJ letter-to-the-editor wrote, that Without Jesus Christ you can't have Christmas, that person is repudiating the U.S. Constitution. A national religious holiday in a secular nation founded on the principle of separation of church and state (religious/conscientious freedom) is a logical impossibility. Since to have a secular government means to have one that is neutral with regards to the fundamental conscientious beliefs of all of its citizens, an American national holiday by definition cannot be religious.

In fact, what we today call Christmas originally didn't have any connection to Jesus at all, writes Onkar Ghate in U.S.News & World Report:

Before Christians co-opted the holiday in the fourth century (there is no reason to believe Jesus was born in December), it was a pagan celebration of the winter solstice, of the days beginning to grow longer. The Northern European tradition of bringing evergreens indoors, for instance, was a reminder that life and production were soon to return to the now frozen earth.

The Romans celebrated the Winter Solstice with the holiday Saturnalia. In Northern Europe, the holiday was called Yule.

Indeed, as philosopher Leonard Peikoff observes over at Capitalism Magazine, the leading secular Christmas symbol - Santa Claus - actually contradicts some standard Christian tenets:

Santa Claus is a thoroughly American invention. ... In 1822, an American named Clement Clarke Moore wrote a poem about a visit from St. Nick. It was Moore (and a few other New Yorkers) who invented St. Nick's physical appearance and personality, came up with the idea that Santa travels on Christmas Eve in a sleigh pulled by reindeer, comes down the chimney, stuffs toys in the kids' stockings, then goes back to the North Pole.

...Santa implicitly rejected the whole Christian ethics. He did not denounce the rich and demand that they give everything to the poor; on the contrary, he gave gifts to rich and poor children alike. Nor is Santa a champion of Christian mercy or unconditional love. On the contrary, he is for justice -- Santa gives only to good children, not to bad ones.

When Congress declared Christmas a National Holiday, in 1870, Christmas ceased being a strictly religious observance and became a secular holiday. A legal religious holiday in a nation dedicated to freedom of religion and conscience is a contradiction. (The Founders used the terms “religion” and conscience” interchangeably. They understood religious freedom to include the freedom not to believe in or practice any religion—in effect, not just freedom of religion, but freedom from religion as well.) Being a national legal holiday, Christmas can have non-religious, non-Christian meaning just as validly as a Christian meaning. It’s a matter of individual preference. Otherwise, what’s the point of freedom of conscience?

So, regardless of your personal beliefs, go ahead and enjoy Christmas on your own terms.

On that note, let me extend to everyone a hearty wish for a joyous, safe, and thoroughly non-contradictory…

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Related Reading:

How the Welfare State Stole Christmas, by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins

Don't Need Christ to Celebrate Christmas

Why Christmas Should be More Commercial—Leonard Peikoff

The Real Meaning of Christmas: What Would Jesus Teach Today?

A ‘War on Christmas?’ No: A War on non-Christians