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Ask An Atheist: Do you celebrate religious holidays?

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By Jim Downard

Do you celebrate “religious” holidays like Easter, Valentine’s Day and Christmas? Why? Why not?

SPO_House-ad_Ask-an-atheist_0425133My secular family has always put up Christmas trees, and I’ve been a carol fan from the get go (religious ones just as much as non).  By the way, one of best albums is the one Leonard Bernstein & NY Philharmonic did with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Christmas is too fun of a time to leave it to Christians to monopolize. And countries like Japan enjoy the practice too without any of its religious connotations being endorsed.

 

Easter was less important, though did do the egg coloring thing as a kid, and chomping on chocolate bunnies.  Valentine’s day less important still.
It’s interesting you didn’t mention Halloween, which also had religious roots but has been so overlayed It’s interesting you didn’t mention Halloween, which also had religious roots but has been so overlayed with secular practices that many forget that (though would be more noticeable in other countries where the Christian religious calendar is more actively followed culturally.

Jim Downard
Jim Downard
Jim Downard is a Spokane native (with a sojourn in Southern California back in the early 1960s) who was raised in a secular family, so says had no personal faith to lose. He's always been a history and science buff (getting a bachelor's in the former area at what was then Eastern Washington University in the early 1970s).

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