Celebrating the Winter Solstice for non Christians

[Cleita]

For non-Christians the holiday season can be lonely as they often feel left out of the celebrations. There is no reason to be. Many Christmas traditions pre-date Christianity. No one knows when Christ was born or even if he is a historical person, but the early Christian church took the Roman holiday of the Saturnalia and Christianized it by substituting the date as the birth date of Jesus Christ.

North of Italy in Europe, the Gauls and Germans celebrated the winter solstice. In the snowy cold of winter, celebrations involved decorating fir trees, burning yule logs and exchanging of gifts as well as banqueting with friends to break up the winter gloom and herald the hope of spring that was coming.

So we non-Christians can celebrate the winter solstice and our celebrations won’t be much different than those of the Christians. Bake your cookies and mince pies. Prepare your plum pudding if that’s what you do traditionally. Decorate your tree. I use an artificial one. Most of them look like the real thing and they are less prone to catching fire. Put up wreathes, bows of holly and mistletoe.

Wrap your presents in bright paper and ribbons. This year my presents will be homemade as will my Season’s Greetings cards. Have your eggnog and bake your ham, turkey or goose. The European custom of having an open house with sweets and eggnog on Christmas Eve is a nice custom for those who can do it. Hang your stockings over the fireplace and burn a Yule log in it.

But the best part of Christmas for kids is Santa Claus. Although Christians have tried to claim he is St. Nicolas, Father Winter and his elves have been around for millennium delivering presents to good children everywhere in a sleigh pulled by reindeer.

So you won’t be displaying a crèche, attending Nativity plays at your Church, or singing carols, but there is at least a CD’s worth of modern songs for the holidays out there to sing or play in the background that celebrate the season without a religious sentiment intruding in it.

The best message of the holiday season is universal. It is peace on earth and I think Mother Earth would agree.

Mods: I was going to post this in the Atheists and Agnostics Forum, but I couldn't find it. If we do in fact have one, please move this post there.