Christmas Time Has Come Again
Christmas time, that wonderfully contradictory season full of children, shopping, advertising, family gatherings, family dislocations, obligations to love people you barely know, to give gifts to people you can’t stand, to pretend to be pleased, to honor the mythological birth of a mythological man/god – also the season of loneliness and suicide, freezing in homeless camps and doorways, looking in from the outside. Jews and Buddhists don’t care about it, and neither do Hindus, and god has yet to strike them down for doing other things while the holy birthday goes by. Me, my parents were agnostics and I became an atheist, so I view it through an historical and sociological lens. Or at least I try to.
I remember being in grade school and having the teacher ask everyone in the class which church they went to with their families. I was about 8 years old and got real self conscious when it came to my turn. Everybody else was quick to name and locate their worship centers, but I just played dumb – “that new one down the road,” I stammered, unable in the face of peer pressure to tell the truth, that we never had and never would go to church. I used to be reflexively anti religious, taking a high ground of sorts. Now I try to see it as one of those human definition things, one of those things that will fall away in time. I have a hunch that most people who go to church, or synagogues or temples don’t believe in that stuff, or at least have serious doubts. But religion is necessary as a tool to be able to relate to Uncle Fred and Aunt Helen, and to be a good member in the local civic club. It looks good on your resume and can make it hard on you if its not there in the story hey write about you in the paper. You won’t et elected without it. So people pretend.
Atheism is hugely misunderstood, and often intentionally so. I’m not there on Sunday morning to put money in the collection plate and they hold it against me. But it’s really pretty simple. It’s just a statement of disbelief. Some people say it’s a religion itself, but that’s silly. An atheist is simply saying, “there’s no post office over there,” while other people say there is. The only way to know for sure of course is to go over there and take a look. If there is a post office then the atheist is wrong and should admit it, but if there isn’t then the other people should admit their mistake. The trouble with religion and gods, however, is their vague undefinability, their mercurial slipperiness. It’s entirely possible for there to be a miniature blue rhinoceros behind the television set. Unlikely, but possible. The only way to know for sure is to go take a look. Chances are you won’t find one, only some dust and a lost sock. But the believer, the Rhinocerino, will tell you that it moved when you went to look and it’s back now – it hides, it plays games with you, it is only available if you believe. Or it’s not really a blue rhinoceros anyway, that’s just one of its physical references – it’s really all things at all times. And so the story gets watery, all argument fails, logic goes out the window, and we had better change the subject.
(If Jesus was the son of god, and Mary was the mother of god, then Jesus was his own father)
Here’s a good one that I read recently: if god is all powerful, can he make a boulder that’s too heavy for him to lift? If he can’t lift it then he’s not all powerful, and if he can’t make it then he’s not all powerful either. Personally, I don’t think there ever was a miniature blue rhinoceros behind the TV and almost everybody knows it. (And I don’t capitalize the word “god” because there are so many of them. And why would it be necessary for a one true god to command that you have no other gods? And what would he be jealous of? And when he said, “let there be light,” who was he talking to? Etc, etc…)
Back to Jesus’ birthday. Ahem. I was sitting in a café one day about 20 years ago waiting for my lunch and looking at the table top add for Kirin Beer. The add explained that the Kirin was a magical flying lion that appeared to coincide with miracles, such as the birth of Confucius, who was born of a virgin. That’s what it said. I nearly fell out of my chair. Born of a virgin? I thought only Jesus did that. Then I remembered all the Greek gods that I learned about in high school, deities who came down to earth and fornicated with humans, producing dozens of half gods. So it looked like Jesus was just one of a long string of these characters. That makes sense. And a friend of mine once pointed out that Jesus couldn’t have been born in late December because of the new born lambs, but rather the Christians just took the pagan ceremonies of solstice and renamed them, taking credit in the name of their god for the natural turning of the seasons. Well done.
So here we are, the lights are on every where, carolers caroling, department store Santas laughing, storewide sales in full swing, inventories doubled in time for the rush – and a strange population of stern faced believers daring you to laugh. Funny, isn’t it?
I have a modest proposal, and it goes like this. My friend Stan Burris said nothing will ever change about poverty and homelessness until people see the woman with the shopping cart as their mother, until they see the guy in the sleeping bag as themselves. He’s right. Do we need deities and mythological beasts to treat each other as relatives? Do we need the threat of eternal damnation to lift our downtrodden fellows out of their predicaments? Do we really need Jesus to understand that there’s no sense in having government in the first place if it doesn’t see to the needs of all of us, that it’s criminal for the police to roust homeless people from their meager comforts, and that greed is not a commendable value system? Isn’t it obvious?
So this Christmas give the gift that keeps on giving. Let’s put those mythologies away, turn on the lights, stop being afraid of the dark, clean our windows, get new glasses, talk to each other without magical mediators, take charge of our present tense, make demands for the future, and actually recreate the world in the image of our better expectations. We can do it. We have nothing to lose but our demons.
I remember being in grade school and having the teacher ask everyone in the class which church they went to with their families. I was about 8 years old and got real self conscious when it came to my turn. Everybody else was quick to name and locate their worship centers, but I just played dumb – “that new one down the road,” I stammered, unable in the face of peer pressure to tell the truth, that we never had and never would go to church. I used to be reflexively anti religious, taking a high ground of sorts. Now I try to see it as one of those human definition things, one of those things that will fall away in time. I have a hunch that most people who go to church, or synagogues or temples don’t believe in that stuff, or at least have serious doubts. But religion is necessary as a tool to be able to relate to Uncle Fred and Aunt Helen, and to be a good member in the local civic club. It looks good on your resume and can make it hard on you if its not there in the story hey write about you in the paper. You won’t et elected without it. So people pretend.
Atheism is hugely misunderstood, and often intentionally so. I’m not there on Sunday morning to put money in the collection plate and they hold it against me. But it’s really pretty simple. It’s just a statement of disbelief. Some people say it’s a religion itself, but that’s silly. An atheist is simply saying, “there’s no post office over there,” while other people say there is. The only way to know for sure of course is to go over there and take a look. If there is a post office then the atheist is wrong and should admit it, but if there isn’t then the other people should admit their mistake. The trouble with religion and gods, however, is their vague undefinability, their mercurial slipperiness. It’s entirely possible for there to be a miniature blue rhinoceros behind the television set. Unlikely, but possible. The only way to know for sure is to go take a look. Chances are you won’t find one, only some dust and a lost sock. But the believer, the Rhinocerino, will tell you that it moved when you went to look and it’s back now – it hides, it plays games with you, it is only available if you believe. Or it’s not really a blue rhinoceros anyway, that’s just one of its physical references – it’s really all things at all times. And so the story gets watery, all argument fails, logic goes out the window, and we had better change the subject.
(If Jesus was the son of god, and Mary was the mother of god, then Jesus was his own father)
Here’s a good one that I read recently: if god is all powerful, can he make a boulder that’s too heavy for him to lift? If he can’t lift it then he’s not all powerful, and if he can’t make it then he’s not all powerful either. Personally, I don’t think there ever was a miniature blue rhinoceros behind the TV and almost everybody knows it. (And I don’t capitalize the word “god” because there are so many of them. And why would it be necessary for a one true god to command that you have no other gods? And what would he be jealous of? And when he said, “let there be light,” who was he talking to? Etc, etc…)
Back to Jesus’ birthday. Ahem. I was sitting in a café one day about 20 years ago waiting for my lunch and looking at the table top add for Kirin Beer. The add explained that the Kirin was a magical flying lion that appeared to coincide with miracles, such as the birth of Confucius, who was born of a virgin. That’s what it said. I nearly fell out of my chair. Born of a virgin? I thought only Jesus did that. Then I remembered all the Greek gods that I learned about in high school, deities who came down to earth and fornicated with humans, producing dozens of half gods. So it looked like Jesus was just one of a long string of these characters. That makes sense. And a friend of mine once pointed out that Jesus couldn’t have been born in late December because of the new born lambs, but rather the Christians just took the pagan ceremonies of solstice and renamed them, taking credit in the name of their god for the natural turning of the seasons. Well done.
So here we are, the lights are on every where, carolers caroling, department store Santas laughing, storewide sales in full swing, inventories doubled in time for the rush – and a strange population of stern faced believers daring you to laugh. Funny, isn’t it?
I have a modest proposal, and it goes like this. My friend Stan Burris said nothing will ever change about poverty and homelessness until people see the woman with the shopping cart as their mother, until they see the guy in the sleeping bag as themselves. He’s right. Do we need deities and mythological beasts to treat each other as relatives? Do we need the threat of eternal damnation to lift our downtrodden fellows out of their predicaments? Do we really need Jesus to understand that there’s no sense in having government in the first place if it doesn’t see to the needs of all of us, that it’s criminal for the police to roust homeless people from their meager comforts, and that greed is not a commendable value system? Isn’t it obvious?
So this Christmas give the gift that keeps on giving. Let’s put those mythologies away, turn on the lights, stop being afraid of the dark, clean our windows, get new glasses, talk to each other without magical mediators, take charge of our present tense, make demands for the future, and actually recreate the world in the image of our better expectations. We can do it. We have nothing to lose but our demons.
posted by Jim Page at 7:27 AM
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