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The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas
Ariane Sherine
42 atheist celebrities, comedians, scientists and writers give their funny and serious tips for enjoying the Christmas season.When the Atheist Bus Campaign was first launched, over £150,000, was raised in four days - enough to place the advert 'There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life' on 800 UK buses in January 2009. Now dozens of atheist writers, comedians and scientists are joining together to raise money for a very different cause.The Atheist's Guide to Christmas is a funny, thoughtful handbook all about enjoying Christmas, from 42 of the world's most entertaining atheists. It features everything from an atheist Christmas miracle to a guide to the best Christmas pop hits, and contributors include Richard Dawkins, Charlie Brooker, Derren Brown, Ben Goldacre, Jenny Colgan, David Baddiel, Simon Singh, AC Grayling, Brian Cox and Richard Herring.The full book advance and all royalties will go to the UK HIV charity Terrence Higgins Trust.
The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas
EDITED BY
ARIANE SHERINE
Contents
Title Page (#uabf6769e-7ab3-5ac9-bfda-c74ad955cd08)
WELCOME (#u1be35114-f7fb-521a-9f5f-b71d8957d109)
The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas (#ufab9df39-10c8-5b88-a070-ee76628e38cd)
STORIES (#u023bff9c-8bed-5178-a2a8-f51a6c450c78)
It’s Beginning to Feel a Lot Like Christmas (#ue8a775a2-bc1d-5c27-8f78-dcb57c169f31)
The Real Christmas Story (#u0e5d60e5-1866-57ef-916a-82cec64e881f)
A Child Was Born on Christmas Day (#u3ae2ab8f-10fa-5fb0-a970-b61ef42f9977)
110 Love Street (#u3b9d295a-c7a7-5b30-8db9-0b0bf485c467)
Losing My Faith (#ucda90dbd-b1c9-552d-aa0a-ee3614e28372)
Hark the Herald Villagers Sing (#uc6c6c19a-67a8-5c74-a3dd-c238e6197676)
A Christmas Miracle (#u913a725f-71f0-5b30-bc10-23a283cac0c2)
SCIENCE (#ub0295b64-7e12-5869-b1a0-4a925a421285)
The Sound of Christmas (#ufb9ae72b-e2d9-5211-849d-f9a9297b521a)
The Great Bus Mystery (#ufa6062ae-e47e-52ea-a21d-c34c9c99a876)
Starry, Starry Night (#ue00785ab-3724-5275-8668-4d9209116f67)
The Ironed Trouser: Why 93% of Scientists Are Atheists (Depending on Who You Ask) (#u3d0b20d1-af62-5e6a-82e2-b5b23ee39000)
The Large Hadron Collider: A Scientific Creation Story (#u4e3cbbeb-981e-551b-9ad9-106d742e519e)
The Power of Ideas (#litres_trial_promo)
How to Understand Christmas: A Scientific Overview (#litres_trial_promo)
HOW TO (#litres_trial_promo)
Things to Make and Do at Christmas (#litres_trial_promo)
How to Have the Perfect Jewish Christmas (#litres_trial_promo)
How to Have a Peaceful Pagan Christmas (#litres_trial_promo)
I’m Dreaming of a Green Christmas (#litres_trial_promo)
How To Stop Worrying and Enjoy Christmas (#litres_trial_promo)
How to Decorate the Outside of Your House with Lights and Not Have Your Neighbours Hate You: A guide to turning your home into a festive something that is so bright it can be seen from space (#litres_trial_promo)
How to Escape from Christmas (#litres_trial_promo)
PHILOSOPHY (#litres_trial_promo)
On Kindness (#litres_trial_promo)
If God Existed, Would He Have a Sense of Humour? (#litres_trial_promo)
Unsilent Night (#litres_trial_promo)
The True Meaning of Christmas (#litres_trial_promo)
Imagine There’s a Heaven (#litres_trial_promo)
The First Honest Christmas Round-Robin Letter (#litres_trial_promo)
A Happy Christmas (#litres_trial_promo)
ARTS (#litres_trial_promo)
An Atheist at the Movies (#litres_trial_promo)
A Christmas Carol (#litres_trial_promo)
O Little Town (#litres_trial_promo)
Simon Price’s Christmas Album (#litres_trial_promo)
Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree (#litres_trial_promo)
It’s a Wonderful Life (#litres_trial_promo)
The Good Books (#litres_trial_promo)
EVENTS (#litres_trial_promo)
God Isn’t Real (#litres_trial_promo)
God Trumps (#litres_trial_promo)
Designing the Atheist Bus Campaign (#litres_trial_promo)
The Godless Concerts (#litres_trial_promo)
The Little Atoms Radio Show (#litres_trial_promo)
A Day in the Life of a Godless Magazine (#litres_trial_promo)
James Randi: The Real Santa Claus (#litres_trial_promo)
CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
SECULAR RESOURCES (#litres_trial_promo)
THANK YOU TO... (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
WELCOME (#ulink_4e10eaea-8b36-527f-b067-193e0fba3314)
Welcome to The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas, the atheist book it’s safe to leave around your granny. Here, you’ll find no chapters titled ‘666 Ways to Diss the Pope’, ‘A Beginner’s Guide to Church Graffiti’, or ‘How to Bash the Bishop’. There’s only one joke about Islamic fundamentalists, coming up now:
Q: Why was Abu Hamza a rubbish receptionist?
A: Because the phone was always off the hook* (#ulink_2965bdd3-147c-509b-9a9a-2f927f45fd51)
and an undecided number of jokes about agnostics† (#ulink_61b9b8b6-b245-5e9c-a628-66247a72cec5) (we wanted to write some, but we weren’t sure, and then we thought we might, but we weren’t certain).
* (#ulink_96825099-7f03-550c-bbc1-aaf0b4b95231)Abu Hamza was indeed a receptionist in a West London hotel in 1983. This was before he had a hook, but let’s not pull apart a joke that wasn’t fit for a Christmas cracker to start with.
† (#ulink_337cfc79-9186-5d2d-b04b-0238648016ca) For the purposes of this Christmas book, they should henceforth be known as ‘eggnogstics’.
THE ATHEIST’S GUIDE TO CHRISTMAS (#ulink_1a15ca87-753e-5b89-91a1-f7cdc4dbfcf8)
What you will find are forty-two* (#ulink_cab0d0d6-84e6-5c97-8bb6-fed2d76c8a58) brilliant contributions from the world’s most entertaining atheist scientists, comedians, philosophers and writers, who have all donated their time, thought and jokes for free to help you enjoy Christmas.
Maybe you bought this book for yourself, or perhaps there’s a price sticker over the ‘A’ of ‘Atheist’ and your devout great-aunt bought it for you, hoping to make you more religious. Either way, all royalties are going straight to the UK’s leading HIV and sexual health charity, Terrence Higgins Trust, so to whoever bought it: thank you. (What do you mean, you haven’t bought it yet and you’re still loitering in the bookshop reading this with your grubby thumbs on the pages? Take it to the counter this instant!)
Whenever I read book introductions, I start bellowing internally, ‘Shut up and let me get on with the book!’ So I hope you enjoy every page, and that you have a truly excellent Christmas.
ARIANE SHERINE
* (#ulink_00841fcf-50ba-5a2e-837c-f3a06c1919ba)Because forty-two, as explained in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is the answer to life, the universe and everything. If you haven’t yet read it, you might want to buy it along with this book. Although the sales assistant may then think you only buy books with the title format The _____ Guide to ______.
STORIES (#ulink_8e5a132a-1666-5499-b032-ca02b42f8b7d)
Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.
MARK TWAIN
It’s Beginning to Feel a Lot Like Christmas (#ulink_c35e8243-4d41-55e4-935e-b6def157d994)
ED BYRNE
‘I’ve already done all my Christmas shopping for this year. I bought all my aunties socks and Y-fronts. See how they like it.’
For many years, that was my only Christmas joke. Seeing as Christmas can be quite a lucrative time for a jobbing comic, a time when you can get paid two or even three times your normal fee in compensation for having to entertain people who are two or even three times more drunk and rowdy than normal, you would think I would have written a slew of seasonal zingers to keep the paper-hatted hordes chuckling into their lukewarm mulled wine. But I never did. I would kick off with my little morsel of Christmas humbuggery and then carry straight on with my usual cavalcade of jokes about smoking, drinking and slagging off Alanis Morissette. Why, I imagine you’re wondering, was this so? Why would somebody who, particularly in his early circuit days, was so eager to churn out crowd-pleasing material not hit that stage with an arsenal of Yuletide yuk-yuks? Surely someone with such a pragmatic approach to comedy would have at least a solid five minutes of holiday-based lateral thinking thrown into a box of sarcasm, wrapped in whimsy paper all tied up in the pink bow of impeccable timing? But no.
The reason for this is simple: I have always found it easier to write jokes about things I hate, and I don’t hate Christmas. Sure, there’s been some dodgy stuff left for me under the tree over the years. ‘Oh, did Santa run out of Scalextric sets? Well, I suppose Tamyanto make one just as good.’ The Santa Claus that came to our house did not believe in paying for advertising. As I grew older and Santa was replaced by my parents, they continued in this vein. Maybe they were early anti-globalisation activists and thought they should boycott major bicycle manufacturers like Raleigh or Dawes. Maybe that’s why at the age of fourteen I was the proud owner of the only Orbita 10-speed in all of North County Dublin.
It wasn’t that my folks were being cheap. They were just doing their bit to fight the power of Big Bike. I’m not saying that Orbita don’t make a quality product, but I can’t help but think that they could have built up much better word-of-mouth if they hadn’t sold my dad a bike with two right pedals. Yes. Two right pedals. When it comes to bicycle pedals, two rights make a wrong. He did try to return the bike a couple of days later, but found out the hard way that a gift shop that wasn’t there before December 1st won’t be there after December 24th. Well, I say he found out the hard way. He wasn’t the one pedalling to school with only one foot. By the time I was fourteen, I was so asymmetrically developed it took all my concentration not to walk in a circle.
Crappy presents notwithstanding, I’ve always been a big Christmas mush, enjoying the sentimentality of the season. New Year, I’ve always felt, can go and shite. Maybe that’s because as a kid I always used to babysit the neighbours’ kids so that the neighbours could go to a party at my parents’ house. But Christmas has always been my favourite time of the year. Even going to mass—a pastime I obviously have little love for if I’m included in this book—was more fun on Christmas Day because we all got to look at each other in our Christmas clothes. Those of us who got decent trendy-looking ones getting to point and laugh uproariously at the chunky-knit efforts of those less fortunate. This was one aspect of Christmas where my mother never let me down. We couldn’t afford Armani, but at least I never had to endure the humiliation of a reindeer on my jumper at age thirteen.
So Christmas has always been in my cool book. I’ve always found it easier to make fun of holidays like Halloween, which must be a very difficult time for paedophiles that are really trying to shake the habit. Imagine! You’ve got the urges. You know it’s wrong, so you lock yourself in the house out of harm’s way. October 31st rolls around and kids are knocking the door down. All of them dressed in cute little outfits, asking for sweets. You don’t even have to offer. Sweets are being requested. That’s almost entrapment, if you ask me.
However, much like everything else since I hit my thirties, certain things are beginning to annoy me about my favourite holiday. Sure, there are the usual headaches that just come as you get older. Not enough time to go shopping. Swearing that next year you won’t leave it too late to do it online. Trying to come to a compromise with your wife regarding whose family you should spend it with. Yours, hers, or perhaps some neutral family that you both loathe equally. Everything gets more complicated as you get older, and the responsibilities of adulthood are always going to do their best to choke the living joy out of any occasion. I’m not really talking about that. I’m talking about something that I used to find exciting about Christmas as a youngster but as an older man I just find wearisome, and that is the length of the lead-up to it.
As you get older there are three things you observe: policemen are getting younger. Teenage girls are dressing more like prostitutes. And Christmas comes earlier every year.
Christmas is a special time for a lot of us, and the rituals, sights, smells and sounds that go along with it can be very effective at stirring up childhood memories of Christmases past and generating a nostalgic, sentimental glow. But if shops start hanging tinsel in October it doesn’t take long for the spell to be broken. Seriously: when you hear Wizzard’s ‘I Wish it Could be Christmas Everyday’, does it remind you of sipping mulled wine next to a roaring fire or does it remind you of November in Woolworths?
I was in my local Tesco a couple of years ago and they were selling Christmas food IN SEPTEMBER. That’s too early. Mid-September and they had shelves of stollen, Christmas pud and mince pies. Nobody is that organised that they buy food three and a half months in advance. Anyone who is that organised makes their own food. Just out of curiosity I pulled a pack of mince pies off the shelf to check the ‘best before’ date and I swear to you it was November 10th. What sort of numpty buys mince pies that go off in November? And don’t tell me that some people might just want to eat mince pies in September. You only eat mince pies at Christmas, and most of us don’t even like them then. I guess the logic is, they’re generally so foul you can’t tell if they’ve gone off or not. Personally, I think you may as well wipe your arse on some digestive biscuits and hand them round as shove a mince pie under my nose, regardless where we are relative to its ‘best before’ date.
What nearly made my wife and I weep genuine tears of actual sadness was the fact that they were also selling single slices of Christmas cake. Imagine that. Not two slices, maybe for a couple who couldn’t be bothered to make a whole cake. No. One slice. That’s a slice for you and no slice for your no pals. It’s important, now and again, to spare a thought for those less fortunate than us who might be spending Christmas alone, but I don’t need such a stark reminder as single slices of Christmas cake on sale in September. That means that, with over three months to go, the bloke in question is already resigned to the fact that he’ll be on his tod this festive season. He’s already got it all planned out. ‘I’ll have a Bernard Matthews Turkey Drummer, followed by a single slice of Christmas cake. Then I’ll open the card I sent to myself. After which I’ll stand on one end of a cracker and pull the other, get drunk, have a wank under the mistletoe and pass out. Happy holidays!’
As depressing a notion as that is, is it any more depressing than the thought of somebody buying mince pies that go off in November? Because, for me, that conjures up images of people who, for some reason, have had to have Christmas early this year. Nobody has an early Christmas for a happy reason. It’s more likely to be a sad reason like, ‘Grandad’s not going to make it to December. We’re having Christmas in November this year and we’re going to enjoy it! We’ll tell him it’s December. He’s so far gone he won’t know the difference.’ Either that or, ‘We have Christmas in October so that Uncle Brendan can spend it with us. He generally goes back to prison shortly after that. It’s not really his fault. He does try to stay out of trouble, but he tends to fall off the wagon at Halloween.’
(Do you see what I did there? That was called reincorporation. It’s a classic comedy trick. You probably thought it was strange that I should even have mentioned Halloween in an essay about Christmas, initially. You probably thought I was just padding out my piece with a bit of Halloween filler. But I wasn’t. All the while I was building to that Uncle Brendan callback. Pretty clever, huh?)
So, what am I trying to say here? I guess the point I’m making is that shitty Scalextric knock-offs and bikes with two right pedals didn’t dampen my enthusiasm for Christmas, but greedy retailers who try to get me into a premature Christmas mood do. I propose a moratorium on all kinds of Christmas marketing pre mid-November. The Advertising Standards Authority should introduce a rule saying sleigh bells may not feature in adverts until the first week of December. And while we’re at it, let’s introduce a law banning the sale or display of tinsel in shops until December 15th. Failing that, I think Wizzard should get back in the studio and record a song called ‘It Should Only Feel Like Christmas One Month a Year’.
The Real Christmas Story (#ulink_6508b77c-a05b-5764-a240-6e386f617294)
JENNY COLGAN
I’ve always been enthralled by Christmas. The English ideal, at any rate (where I come from in Scotland, Hogmanay was always the crowd-puller). The crackling snow, the animals lying down in their stalls silently at midnight in homage to the infant king; and, particularly, the glorious carolling heritage (my favourite is the rarely sung Nurse’s Carol, joining the choir being the sole highpoint of a miserable year long ago working in a hospital):
As the evening draws on
And dark shadows alight
