How Does An Atheist Celebrate Christmas?

Greetings friends and followers of the lovely Alisha! My name is Kayla, I blog over at Adventures of a Suburban Hippie. Lisha, my lovely best friend, has kindly asked me to write this guest post, and I'm so excited...I have spent the past week brainstorming the perfect post :)

First, a little bit of background information on me! My name is Kayla, I'm 22 and I live in Alabama. I'm getting (almost done with!) my degree in Biophysical Anthropology, and I will be going straight through to get my masters in Library Science. My dream job is to work as a librarian for the government, either at the Smithsonian or for NASA. I'm a long-term, strict vegetarian and, as my blog title suggests, very eco-conscious. I'm an introvert, but a very happy and optimistic one. I also am an atheist. A strong atheist, in fact. 

(Lucy, the Australopithecus. This is the stuff I study. I'm proud of my heritage!)

Guess what my favorite holiday is? Not Earth Day, but...Christmas! I adore everything about Christmas. While nothing will ever beat the Christmases of my youth, living in Hawaii and surfing on all holidays, I still adore it. The trees, the decorations, the smells, the pure sense of joy. I am even starting to like Christmas music again, after it was ruined for me by years of working retail in high school. 

This seems to astound Christians, the idea of an atheist celebrating Christmas. Many of them interject, asking if I call it Krismas or X-Mas (no, it's called Christmas), how I can celebrate a Christian holiday unless I'm secretly a wannabe Christian (it's not a Christian holiday), or, my favorite, if I'm just so materialistic that I celebrate a holiday for the sole purpose of giving and receiving gifts.

Christmas is not a Christian holiday, and I'm not at all bothered that the word "Christ" is in it, though I do roll my eyes when people say "Keep Christ in Christmas." The winter solstice occurs on December 22nd every year, with the sun reaching it's low point in the sky and staying there for three days. The winter solstice, along with the summer solstice and the vernal and autumnal equinoxes were common times for religious and cultural celebrations for many cultures, parts of which have shaped our present day way of celebrating.

The Norse Pagans are responsible for yuletide carols and greetings.

Wiccans came up with wreaths and decorating with holly.

Here's a big shout out to the Druids for coming up with kisses under the mistletoe ;)

Thor, Odin and St. Nicholas are all credited with bringing presents in the night.

Sleipnir, Odin's 8 legged horse, started the tradition of hooves on the rooftop.

The summary? Just because Jesus contributed the name of the celebration does not mean that only believers may celebrate. In fact, if we were tallying, the Norse gods (woot woot, I'm very proud of being Scandinavian!) contributed the most to our modern celebrations! 

Christmas is my favorite time of the year. It means cozy sweaters and homemade hot chocolate. It means gathering my large family in one place for the sole purpose of spending time together. It means eating a lot of delicious food. It means exchanging thought-out gifts. It means Christmas trees, Christmas smells, family traditions. 

Of all of the above, the traditions are the most meaningful. Every year, we have lefse (a type of Scandinavian bread) with our Christmas Eve dinner. We gather to open presents. For the 23rd time in my life, I'll get a special pair of pajamas on Christmas Eve. Every morning of December, I open my advent calendar to eat a piece of chocolate. 

This time of the year fills me with so much love and joy. May you all have a beautiful, god-less, heathen, merry time this month <3

Water.

Water is SO good for us. It's tasty, refreshing, can fix some of our physical and even emotional issues. But what about other water: showers, sprinklers, pools, etc? I'm sure you don't really think about this because we've always had water, and always will. Done.

I've been thinking a lot more in depth about this lately though. As Andrew and I were walking home one night, we passed through the WSU campus and noticed the sprinkler system was on, no big deal right? WRONG. There were sprinklers watering poles, curbs, sidewalks, things that clearly do not need water.

Reading my aunt Michelle's blog [Thomas Belizian Adventure] about how they had NO water for a week got me thinking: what would I do if I had no water?!

I've asked my Sri Lankan and Nepali friends if they think we take water for advantage here in the US and they said yes. There are places all over the world that have no water- even for months or more at a time! I can't fathom that at all. We have pools, sprinkler systems (don't even get me started on how wasteful those are), long showers, long baths, etc. and most of us don't think anything of it. We are lucky enough to have access to all of this. But it's taken advantage of! We (obviously not everyone) are so wasteful with water here, and it kills me a little. Even just leaving sink water on for too long, making sure every house in perfect suburbia has a perfectly green lawn and a huge in ground pool, whatever the reason is- it's most of the time not even necessary!

So with this, I just want you to start noticing how much water you use in your daily life. Notice if it is being wasted at all. Imagine your life if you had NO water for a long period of time. I can't even think about going a day without it, I love it so much! Try not to waste so much. And if you're one of those people who just HAS to water your lawn all the time, give it up! Who cares if your lawn doesn't look chemically modified like your neighbor's? You're saving water and that is what's really important. (Plus, so many lawn things have nasty chemicals in them that are already bad for the environment!) Let's enjoy our water as much as we can! Not abuse the privilege of having it!