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With slow-breathing ox-en
To warm him all ni-i-ght
The prince of compassion
Concealed in a byre
Watches the rafters above him
RESPLENDENT WITH FIRE.
Good King Wenceslas, with his foreign fountains and strange ways, was as mystical to me as anything in Narnia; likewise the three kings, whose sonorous names and inexplicable gifts—
Myrrh have I
Its bitter perfume
Breathes a life
Of gathering gloom
Sorrowing, sighing
Bleeding, dying
Sealed in the stone cold tomb.
—gave me strange, excited thrills.
In my teens, I dressed up as a Victorian wench and took part in carol-singing tableaux at the local castle; the same one where, years later, I would get married—at Christmas time, the pillars swathed in holly and ivy. (Incidentally, if you’re having a secular service and aren’t allowed to mention the word God, I can save you some time and effort and inform you that the only carol that legally passes muster for a non-religious Christmas wedding is ‘Deck the Halls’.)
One of the great joys of having your own children, of course, is sharing Christmas with them. My husband, a Kiwi, spent all his childhood Christmases barbecuing on the beach and is entirely unfussed by the whole affair, but I had such wonderful Christmases that I want to make it as special as I can. Still, how to do that without fundamentally accusing their teachers of lying—or, in fact, lying?
And it is, after all, one of the greatest stories ever told—the little baby born in a manger, far from home. It has intrigue, small children (drummer boys are particularly popular in my house), stars, angels, various animals and getting to sleep outdoors—all catnip to littlies.
But, as that wonderfully conflicted cove John Betjeman put it:
…is it true? For if it is…
No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare—
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.
Because, of course, accepting the Christmas story means accepting a whole bunch of other stuff; doctrine perhaps not quite so tea-towel—and stuffed-lamb-friendly. And now my three-year-old is at pre-school—a Catholic pre-school, no less, it being our local—of course, the questions have begun.
‘Are you having the Baby Jesus?’ he says, prodding my large pregnant stomach.
‘No,’ I say. ‘That’s been done.’
‘Oh. Are you having a monkey?’
‘I hope not.’
I find him in the bedroom with the lovely nativity book his devout—and devoted—granny has sent him, even though he hasn’t been baptised and thus is slightly damned and stuff, arguing with his friend Freya.
‘Those are the three kings,’ he says solemnly.
‘NO! They’re the three wise men!’ said Freya, in a tone that brooks no argument.
‘NO! They are KINGS!’
‘WISE MEN!’
‘KINGS!’
‘MUM!!! FREYA SAYS SHE KNOWS MY STORY BUT IT IS MY STORY!!!’
‘IT IS MY STORY!’
‘It is,’ I say, ‘everyone’s story. It is one of the most famous stories ever told. Nearly everyone you will ever meet will know a little bit about this story.’
Wallace thinks about this for a bit.
‘No. It is just mine. Grandma sent it to me.’
Sometimes I feel like Charlotte in Sex and the City, having one last Christmas tree before she gives it all up for Judaism.
I take the boys to Christmas-morning mass—where my mother is playing the organ—but they don’t know when to sit or stand, or what to do, and I am unaccountably nostalgic for a life I never wanted.
Christmas, as a practising Catholic child, was seen as a reward for lots and lots and lots of church. We were constantly told that Easter was the more important festival, but Easter is relatively speaking, RUBBISH. Yes, there’s a chocolate egg, but six weeks of no sweets plus Stations of the Cross on Wednesdays, Good Friday mass, confession and the Saturday vigil (HOURS long)—the trade-off is, frankly, just not worth it. Though the palms on Palm Sunday are quite good.
Christmas, on the other hand, is just normal amounts of church (except, alas, that totally gruesome year it fell on a Saturday and we couldn’t believe we had to go again the next day), but also school parties, the Blue Peter advent ring, the calendar, going to Woolies to buy your mum a tiny bottle of Heather Spirit cologne (69p), and the glorious bellowing of ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel’—a song more than a thousand years old—all serving merely to heighten the crazed, overwhelming anticipation that could only be sated by a pack of thirty felt-tip pens, graded by shade, yellow in the middle, and getting to eat lots of very small sausages.
But there is another story too, I know, to tell my little ones; perhaps not quite as immediate, but wonderful in its own way, and it starts:
‘In the northern parts of the world, the winters are long, and cold and dark, and people would get sad and miserable. So they have always in the very depths of winter, from the beginning of recorded time, celebrated light, and life, and the promise of renewal and new birth, just when they most needed cheering up.
‘And they would store food, and eat, and drink and be merry. And, in time, different cultures and creeds passed over the world, and changed and added to the stories about why we were celebrating, and said that perhaps we were celebrating because of a green man, or Mithras, or Sol, or that the Baby Jesus was being born, or because Santa Claus is flying over the world—look here, NASA even tracks him by satellite (www.noradsanta.org).
‘And now, like all the millions of people who lived before us, we too use midwinter to see our family and exchange gifts, and feast and be merry and carry on traditions from our ancestors.’
And they will say, ‘Why?’
And I will say, ‘Because we love you.’
And I will wonder, as I often do, why we love our children—our own children, not a chimera wrapped in swaddling clothes and found in a manger—so very, very much, and wishing, as atheists, that there were slightly more reassuring, less genetic, cold scientific reasons that we could give for why this is so.
And then I will probably just say, ‘Shall we sing “Little Donkey” again?’, knowing that they will immediately rush off to fetch their sweet Christmas bells.
A Child Was Born on Christmas Day (#ulink_0e934ba4-5dc9-5c84-82fa-47ade1efa276)
EMERY EMERY
Being born on December 25th, I often found myself quite melancholy around the holidays. As a child it was simply not possible for my family to give me the special attention that most enjoy on the hallowed day of their birth. For children unfortunate enough to share their birthday with Jesus, Christmas is an unholy day of disappointment and loneliness.
Every birthday party I attended was clearly a day set aside specifically to celebrate one person’s most important life event—emerging from deep within their mother’s womb and surviving the ordeal. I had survived, but as it turns out, the Christians believe that Jesus was born of a virgin on December 25th and they deem it a miracle. How can any kid compete with that?
My grandmother raised me for my first ten years, and she tried her best to make me feel special every Christmas. She would bake a cake just for me. One year it was in the shape of a snowman and another it was Santa’s face. I especially enjoyed the Santa cake because I was allowed to take a knife to good Ol’ Saint Nick. There was a cathartic quality to it. I don’t remember any Jesus cakes, but that would have been nice as well.
Even though Grandma tried to make Christmas just a bit more about me, her efforts always fell short as throngs of family poured into the house to exchange gifts with each other and give me my two-birds-with-one-stone presents. ‘Happy Birthday & Merry Christmas’ was often written on the gift tags. I recall plotting to give people birthday gifts that said ‘Happy Birthday & Merry Christmas’, and I would then make a conscious decision to not give them anything on Christmas Day. But somehow, I just couldn’t go through with it.
During one of my early teenage years, in a conciliatory effort, my mother decided my birthday would be celebrated on the half-year, June 25th. I thought this was a really great idea, and I was insanely excited. I ran to my room and marked it on my calendar. Sadly, Mom was not very good with follow-through and, while she may well have marked a calendar herself, she had forgotten to check it. June came and went without any fanfare. Needless to say, my disappointment grew even more profound.
Every year that passed brought another Christmas that left not just me unfulfilled, but my sister as well. She had been born on Christmas Eve, one day short of a year after I was born. Just as I suffered the unfortunate side-effects of being swept aside to make room for a grand celebration of the birth of Baby Jesus, my sister endured the same profound injustice. Not only would our day not be ours, it would be everyone’s. Both my sister and I had to split what tiny amount of birthday we were able to cobble together.
One particularly lamentable Christmas, my sister received two identically wrapped packages from our mother. She unwrapped one to find a single, fairly cheap earring. As she unwrapped the other box, revealing the matching earring, Mom exclaimed, ‘One is for your birthday and the other is for Christmas!’ I wish I could report that my sister let loose with an impressively long string of absurdly creative expletives, but I have no memory of this particular event. I suspect I was sitting quietly next to the tree attacking the manger with GI-Joe, as was a common, seasonal private practice of mine.
One year, according to my mother, she had done everything she could to give us a classic birthday. She had planned a huge party for my sister and me. She invited all our friends and scheduled the party for December 23rd, which fell on a Saturday that year. While not all my friends were able to be there with holiday travels and family gatherings pre-empting our party, many of our friends were indeed present, and I am told we had a great birthday party.
While I have no doubt that my mother remembers it that way, I do not have any memory of this amazing party. Any psychologist worth his or her weight in Freudian dogma may be able to explain why I would have no memory of it or why my mother would remember it so clearly, but what I know for sure is that I have no recollection of any Christmas that is fond. This party may have happened and my mother may have had an amazing time, but I was not present at any such event.
Through most of my childhood, I wished Christmas didn’t exist and harboured ill-will to all who enjoyed it. It made me angry and sad. I felt that I was being robbed by Jesus, Santa, all the reindeer and everyone I knew. Then, as a young adult, I found myself investigating Christmas, and discovered some interesting information.
While no one seems to agree on the actual day of Jesus’ birth, most scholars agree that it wasn’t December 25th. Some have it in November. Others claim it was in March, and still more believe it must have been in September. But whatever day it was, it clearly wasn’t on my birthday, and that makes it even worse. Here I am, being robbed of my very own day by a ritual that isn’t even accurate! If only there were a god to pray to and ask for some kind of retribution.
My point is this: any child born on Christmas Day cannot have a real birthday. It’s not possible. There are some who have claimed that I turned to atheism due to my birthday melancholy, but while I will never celebrate my day of birth on the level that most enjoy theirs, I am not an atheist because of this. I am an atheist because I reject all stories that are not rooted in and supported by empirical data—because I do not need to have stories that make me feel better about that which I do not know or that which I fear.
I appreciate all that my mother and my grandmother tried to do. They can’t be held responsible for my failed childhood birthdays—they were up against aeons of ritual and tradition. But now, as a full-grown adult with my destiny in my hands, I hold myself responsible for my own happiness and no longer sit around, sullen and depressed, every Christmas. In fact, I enjoy celebrating Christmas in my own way. My wife and I fly out to visit her parents each year, usually on Christmas Day in fact. Since most people think it sacred, flights are usually half price—and if they’re overbooked, we often give up our seats in exchange for travel vouchers.
One Christmas we did just this, had a lovely evening in a nice hotel, got up on the 26th, flew into our destination and had a wonderful dinner with my wife’s parents. We awoke on the 27th, had a very nice gift exchange, ate birthday cake and played in the winter snow. While my wife’s parents believe in God, they aren’t really much for ritual. They just look forward to seeing us for the holidays, whichever day we arrive.
Whether travelling, staying in a hotel or enjoying my wife’s family, December 25th isn’t Christmas Day to us. My wife has taken to referring to it as Emerymas. Sure, Emerymas is a contrived and fully invented construct meant to mark the birth of my wife’s husband. But why not? If ancient priests could do it, so can my wife.
If you’re a kid born on the 25th, Christmas sucks. Emerymas, however? A day like any other day, with one very distinct exception: I was born. And according to my wife, that’s something to celebrate.
110 Love Street (#ulink_b6b284c2-5530-5e45-8419-06055e460f43)
CATIE WILKINS
I remember being confused as a four-year-old, as I sat in assembly at primary school and everyone said the Lord’s Prayer. I did as I was told and joined in, saying, ‘Our Father, who art in heaven.’ But I thought we were thanking our dads for working hard at their jobs to bring us, their families, home our daily bread, so that we could have Marmite on toast, and jam sandwiches, and other nutritious bread-based snacks. I remember thinking that perhaps I wasn’t really eligible to join in anyway, as my dad didn’t actually work in heaven, he worked for Tesco. I kept my fears under my hat, but felt like a potential fraudster.
My dad, a supremely rational man, even when addressing four-year-olds, answered my question, ‘What happens when you die?’ logically and truthfully. He replied, ‘No one really knows, but we have lots of theories. Some people believe in heaven and hell, some people believe in reincarnation, and some people believe that nothing happens.’ The other four-year-olds were not privy to the open, balanced information that I had, leaving me the only four-year-old to suggest that heaven might not exist. Unlike John Lennon’s song ‘Imagine’, this suggestion was not met with delight or praise or musical accolades. The other children just said I was wrong. I became more of an outsider.
I guess I must have continued to feel like an outsider, as when I was five I attempted to send a Christmas card to the Devil. Not to rebel—I was trying to cheer him up. I sent one to God as well, to keep it fair. I wasn’t taking sides in their cosmic disagreement.
The card to God (complete with made-up address 110 Love Street) said, ‘Well done, you must be very proud.’ The card to the Devil (who of course lived at 110 Hate Street) said, ‘Please try to have a good time, in spite of everything.’ I guess I thought he might be feeling blue or left out on the birthday of his archnemesis.
But I think I could relate more to the Devil, and could associate more with his underdog status of everyone hating him. I was chucked out of ballet at the age of four for being disruptive, so I think that the Devil and I both knew what it was like to be excluded from things—the eternal paradise for rebelling against the supreme being; I, a ballet class, for finding it hilarious to say ‘no’ instead of ‘yes’ when the register was called.
I didn’t expect the Devil to write back. Everybody knows he’s a bad boy. But God didn’t write back either, and he had no excuse. I’d heard the phrases ‘Ask and you shall be given’ and ‘Seek and ye shall find’, but I had scientific evidence that Father Christmas was more communicative than either of them. I’d seen that he’d eaten the mince pies I’d left out for him, but when I’d asked God if I could become a mermaid, my legs had stayed resolutely in place.
However, I decided it was understandable that God was far busier than Father Christmas. After all, while they were both very old and had to keep their long white beards in shape, God had to work 365 days a year (except for Sundays), while Father Christmas only worked for one night, and he also only had to help children, not adults, leaving him more time to stuff his face with mince pies. I guess Father Christmas just had a better union.
I think I partly wanted to become a mermaid because of the Biblical story of Noah’s Ark—if it happened again, at least I’d be able to swim away. I had always been a bit worried about this story from an animal rights perspective: the other children enjoyed the bit where the animals went in two by two, but I felt sorry for those who hadn’t made it on to the ark. For them, it must have been like an animal-based Titanic. My one consolation was the fact that all the sea creatures (including dolphins and sea horses) would have survived.
I officially called myself an atheist from the age of ten. I was the only atheist in my class, but the other kids and I did agree on one thing: I wasn’t going to heaven. (Though my reasoning was that you couldn’t go somewhere that didn’t exist.)
I had one ally in our physics teacher (who was an atheist, even though it was a C of E school). He told us the various things humans have believed about the world, from it being flat, to the sun going round the earth, and also told us about the various scientists who had been killed or imprisoned for making new discoveries that went against the doctrine of the church at the time.
He also made a joke which delighted me. Gesturing at the white-board he said, ‘People used to believe that heaven was up here, earth was in the middle, flat, and hell was down there below earth. Which of course we now know can’t be true, because hot air rises, and all the people in heaven would have got burned.’
This teacher said that science was like a box, and that we could never open its lid. We could, however, investigate in other ways: we could conduct experiments and try to recreate events to get the same results. So we could build an identical box, the same weight and size, and say, ‘I have discovered what is in the box’; but then, if the first box suddenly turned green, but our box didn’t, we would have to conclude, ‘Okay, I was wrong’, and start again to try to make our own box go green. In this way science was always learning, changing and expanding, but admitted to not being absolute.
When I heard that the money from this book was going to go to the HIV charity Terrence Higgins Trust, I was really glad it was going to such a fantastic and worthwhile cause. And it seems appropriate that money raised from a book by atheists is going towards humans helping humans, in both a literal and practical sense.
December is historically a time when humans have a festival to cheer them up because the sun has gone, and Christmas holds the current title. Christmas has done well, to its credit. It’s beaten off the competition and is the reigning champion.
There’s also a lot to be said for Christmas. The high spirits, good food and bringing people together are excellent things for humans. Although anyone who says it is the greatest story ever told clearly hasn’t read Watchmen.
Now I am an adult, I can look back on the things that used to make me feel confused, alienated and excluded as an atheist, and take the positives. And, in retrospect, sending a Christmas card to the Devil is ironically possibly the most Christian thing you can do—what with all those parables about turning the other cheek.
So my advice to anyone wanting to celebrate an atheist Christmas would be: imagine there’s no heaven, then try to have a good time in spite of everything.
Losing My Faith (#ulink_e778b499-76dd-57c6-a702-fe2d7e834a6d)
SIMON LE BON
I love Christmas. I always have, ever since I was a child. Back then, Christmas was all about the Baby Jesus—my parents encouraged belief in him. But even if they hadn’t, church and school—which were both C of E—would have greatly influenced my beliefs.
School was very Christian. At Christmas, we had nativity plays, but I never got a leading role in them. I think I was a sheep! I always thought I was destined for great things there, but I never achieved them.
However, though I was Christian and believed in Jesus, I remember that at school there were these fascinating children who were excused assembly. They didn’t have to attend, and for a long time I thought this was because they were atheists. It was only later that I realised this was because they were Jewish, or Muslim, or Hindu.
I was fascinated by the fact that they were allowed to stay out—I would have loved to. While everybody was in assembly, you could have wandered around the whole school by yourself without anybody watching you. That was my fantasy—to get up to mischief in the back of the art room!
I had a lot of faith at one time. I was tempted to go to church as a child, because they told me you earned a shilling every week for singing in the choir. I thought, ‘Mm, wages!’ and became a choirboy.
When you’re in a church choir, you actually go to church about five times over Christmas. You go twice on Christmas Eve, and sing three times on Christmas Day, if you’re doing Matins, the Communion Service and Evensong. So that’s potentially five professional engagements for a shilling a week over Christmas. The music and the choir were very important to me, and they gave me this feeling of godliness, which I really liked—and I prayed.
But I don’t miss that feeling—when it went, it went. It was like somebody pulled the plug out of the bath and the water went down. It didn’t feel good while it was going down, but by the time it had gone you’d got used to your bodyweight, got out of the bath and got on with something else. That’s kind of how it was.
