This atheist doesn't want coal or Bill O'Reilly in her stocking

I couldn’t help myself this morning. There was Bill O’Reilly’s column in the Reno Gazette-Journal with the somewhat provocative headline: Have Yourself A Godless Little Christmas. Could it be? Has Bill discovered rational thinking and joined us in the ranks of atheists and secular humanists?

Oh, no. He’s instead all in a huff since it’s obvious that the atheists are intent on spoiling christmas for both Tiny Tim and Bill himself. He refers to us as ‘the coal in the stocking crowd’.

Count me surprised by this momentous news.

I pride myself on the awesome ‘Mega Christmas’ playlist on my ipod, and my deft touch in ornamenting an, albeit fake, christmas tree. I love good egg nog with bourbon. I even judged the neighborhood christmas light competition for several years … of course being chauferred around in a warm car, with a picon punch in hand helped.

And, christmas is my favorite time to visit Europe, for the wonderful decorations, hot wine, ice skating, music, more hot wine, charming handicraft markets and of course, more hot wine. I stayed fairly ‘well lit’ for several freezing days in old Prague one christmas and had a ball. Europeans don’t seem to get their knickers into a knot over non-believers as long as they agree to have lots of fun.

Americans could learn something there.

Really, I was confused at how Bill had missed noticing that a lot of us heathens get right into the trees and lights and merriment - since they were originally pagan mid-winter festivities to begin with. It wasn’t until we were well within the Common Era that christians decided to steal perfectly good holidays and call them their own.

Most educated people - even those of religious persuasions - know this to be so. Perhaps Bill missed that lecture. I think practically everybody also knows that Jesus wasn’t born on December 25th either.  Some 2,000 years ago, the part of the world where christianity originated was ruled by the Roman Empire. The Roman festival of Saturnalia was held in the week before December 25, celebrating the ending of the winter solstice.

In fact, much of the good old pagan spirit of revelery was still to be found in England of the 1800’s with a peasant being crowned Lord of Misrule. Quite rightly, christmas was a time to get drunk and ask for sexual favors. This custom is even found among christmas celebrants to this day, as many husbands may attest. They often find this works on their birthdays, too.

After just a few minutes of fact checking, Bill could have found out that christmas came with some disfavor in England and the American colonies at one point after the protestant reformation. Adherants of Cromwell thought there was just too much catholicism going around, and that the christmas holiday was just another artifact of the roman church that needed to be exorcised.

It wasn’t until Dicken’s wrote A Christmas Carole in 1843 that the tradition we now know as christmas began. Of course, this model worked in brilliantly with a burgeoning trend toward capitalism … which reached its zenith in modern America where one and all could max out their credit cards to show just how much they love jesus.

This could be one reason why the drunkeness still follows along with the holiday.

But Bill says that atheists are just jealous of the christmas tradition. We have no saint nick. Just Bill Maher.

Maher is way funnier. Santa sometimes makes small children at the shopping mall cry.

O’Reilly goes on to claim that we non-believers simply use christmas as an opportunity to mock believers. All that I can say here is … well, not that we need additional opportunities to mock religion as it provides so many … but yes. It is a great time to get a good laugh at religions expense.

And why not? I read the comics first, too. I’ll bet Bill O’Reilly never reads the comics.

Again, some fact checking goes a long way to sorting out things like how actual atheists feel about the holiday:

Richard Dawkins:  “So divorced has Christmas become from religion that I find no necessity to bother with euphemisms such as happy holiday season. In the same way as many of my friends call themselves Jewish atheists, I acknowledge that I come from Christian cultural roots. I am a post-Christian atheist. So, understanding full well that the phrase retains zero religious significance, I unhesitatingly wish everyone a Merry Christmas.”

Sam Harris, remarking on the tree he wife likes to have: “This is a tree that even an atheist would be comfortable with.”

Even David Silverman, the son of atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair, and spokesperson for American Atheists admits:  “I do like to go to the parties.”

He worries a lot about our “anti-god signs” disturbing small children at such a joyous time of year. I’m so busy trying to fulfill other people’s christmas fantasies that I don’t have much time for making anti-god signs, but can’t you imagine the fun you could have in a crafty, hot glue gun way? Just think of what Martha Stewart could do with it.

Finally, Bill comes forth with some compelling statisics concerning how many of us prefer “Merry Christmas!” to “Have a Happy Holiday” yada yada yada.

Unfortunately, I’ve lost interest by now, not giving a rat’s ass what people say as long as I can have another eggnog and sexual favors from my husband.

I don’t much worry about the baby jesus myth ruining my holiday, nor do I need some horrific blood sacrifice to motivate me to have hope for a new year, or take a moment to reflect on our shared humanity. Nothing of any particular import happened on December 25th 2,000 years ago. I have no more problem with the day than most other days … well, Monday’s perhaps.

Question for the new year: Will Bill O’Reilly ever get worked into a lather about anything that really matters?

Merry christmas and happy new year.

maven

Update on Monday, December 7, 2009 at 22:43 by mavenandmeddler

Oh, and one final thought about Bill O’Reilly’s rant about atheists.

If he had one ounce of honesty in his writing, he could have also concluded that muslims, jews, hindus and assorted other non christians might have a reason to ruin his christmas.

He doesn’t say so for two reasons:

1- it would be financially unwise.

2- he wouldn’t like the fatwa being lodged in his name and becoming invisible to save his miserable hide.

That means Bill O’Reilly is a chicken shit and intellectually dishonest.

But most thinking people already know that.