Nutcracker was great. I’ll probably talk more about it next week.
Christmas as an Atheist
Everybody knows I’m a “spiritual orphan,” right? That’s the term I use most these days, though I mentioned a while back that I could technically be called an apostate, which I still find sort of interesting.
At any rate, what does a spiritual orphan do at Christmas? It’s all about Jesus, right? We’re celebrating his birthday, aren’t we?
Well, not exactly. It doesn’t have to be, anyway.
In my mind, it’s about love and family. And if you read Luke 2 with an objective understanding of 1st century Hebrew architecture, you’ll know that the historical Jesus wasn’t born in a drafty stable or cave or something like that. He was likely born in a house surrounded by family. The manger, the feeding trough where he supposedly spent his first night on earth, was part of the lower level of the house. It was possibly part of the wall separating the animals from the living area.
That idea makes even more sense if you look at the historical setting objectively instead of dogmatically. Joseph was a carpenter. He didn’t know nothin’ bout birthin’ babies. It makes perfect sense for him to seek out a midwife or a female relative to help his betrothed give birth. And it should have been easy enough to find a female relative; he was in his ancestral hometown, after all. Wasn’t he? For that census thing (that probably didn’t happen and doesn’t make any sense).
At any rate, since I learned about the likely arrangement of the house and the meaning of kataluma vs pandocheion, I’ve come to realize the probable reality of what happened on that day in Bethlehem, whenever it was. Joseph and Mary should have been surrounded by his family as she went into labor. I don’t think it’s likely they would have insulted him by banishing them to a drafty stable when they had a warm and safe place right in their very house. In fact, it’s likely—in my mind, anyway—that they were given the enclosed stable for her privacy because the women in the house knew she was close to delivery.
That changes the Christmas narrative in a big way.
Dan McClellan created several videos about Christmas and Jesus’ birth, and I collected them into a playlist at YouTube. I think if you watch them objectively and keep an open mind, they’ll teach you something about Christmas.
Christmas Music
Speaking of playlists…
What kind of music does an atheist/agnostic listen to at Christmas?
Anything we want to, really.
I still enjoy many of the traditional carols and tunes. Carrie Underwood’s “Oh Holy Night” is simply sublime. Pentatonix does several stunning arrangements—with two gay men singing them! That’s got to freak some Christian folks out, especially with the way they treated Ray Boltz.
My “Perfect Christmas Playlist” on Spotify has almost three hundred songs on it. Some might say it’s heavily secular, because it’s got “All I Want for Christmas Is You, and Sleigh Ride, and “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” which are mostly secular. But it also has multiple arrangements of religious songs such as “Silent Night,” “What Child Is This?” and “Do You Hear What I Hear?”
How can I listen to Christmas carols, especially religious ones? Mostly because I enjoy the music. I can separate the music from the…meaning? From the religion?
There are some songs I won’t add to my list. I simply refuse to listen to “Christmas Shoes,” given the theme of the song and the date of my mother’s death. I will leave the room if it comes on. I’ve blocked it on Pandora to the best of my ability (though I haven’t listened to Pandora in ages), and I’ll never add it to any of my playlists on Spotify.
I don’t really enjoy “Mary, Did You Know” much any longer. It came out when I was still heavily involved in the church and Mark Lowry sings it beautifully, as do most artists. But it just doesn’t sit well with me these days. I think we venerate Mary far too much, even in the Protestant church. Doing so ignores the consent issues that surround her pregnancy which gets kind of gross as you dig into it.
What are some of your favorite Christmas songs?
Thanks for reading! Feel free to share a thought in the comments. Sign up for my infrequent newsletter here. Find some of my other writing at The Good Men Project, too. Subscribe to the blog via the link in the right sidebar or follow it on Mastodon. You can also add my RSS feed to your favorite reader.
Share your thoughts!