Christmassyness

My first piece is the one I was asked for - it's something I did for a writing class. The subject was "alternative Christmas", meaning no sleighbells, no Santa, no twee stuff. But a very wise band told us It's Cliched To Be Cynical At Christmas, so a bag of ire wasn't going to be much of an alternative either. So I came up with this - it's not overjoyed, it's not entirely cynical. Hope you like.

~

Christmas can be quite a strange time for an atheist, at least in the early years after you work out that's what you are. It takes a while to work out exactly what you're celebrating. Or if you're actually allowed to celebrate. In the end, as I'm on the Humanist end of atheism, I decided I'd use Christmas to celebrate people – and as a reminder.

I'll explain that. When I was younger, Christmas was far busier than it is now in our house. People seemed to be in and out all day, in various states of good-natured intoxication of course, and there were more people at dinner, and more people to visit. These days, there aren't so many. As I've gotten older, Christmas has become smaller and smaller. It's not just rose-tinted nostalgia: so many of those people simply aren't there any more.

It's normal at this time of year, regardless of your beliefs, to get sad and miss those people. It is sad, but personally I like to remember them as they were at Christmas: happy, glad to see you, enjoying a truly carefree day. Christmas for some heralds the arrival of massive rows along with the family; but in our house it was the day when we set everything that was bothering us aside, and that's the tradition I'd like to pass on most.

That shouldn't just happen at Christmas though. Which is where the reminder part comes in. After seeing a lot of American friends celebrate Thanksgiving, I expressed the wish that we have a similar day – that we shouldn't need a reason to practice gratitude, but it'd be nice to have a day geared towards reminding us. Christmas is the same. People talk of the spirit of Christmas, of helping out the less fortunate at this time of year, of spending time with their family. All wonderful things, but they shouldn't be confined to Christmas.

You don't need a holiday to be kind to people, or to spend time with your family, or to appreciate what you have. Sometimes we all need the reminder, myself included, but goodwill doesn't have to start and end with Christmas. Handily enough, this attitude is also good for people who try to force you into their version of Christmas spirit when you really can't be arsed – if you do your best, and you know you do your best, then that's the important part and you can leave the showing it off and Santa hats to the others.

Not that there's a right way or wrong way to celebrate, or not celebrate. Religious or not religious, owner of a ridiculous hat or person most likely to be called Scrooge by your friends, it doesn't matter. Everyone gets so caught up in the hype, those who dislike it get caught up too in reaction to having the festivities shoved in their faces so often, and nobody publicly acknowledges that Christmas is a sad time of year, too. It's a strange side-effect of modern culture. But underneath all that, regardless of the differences, regardless of belief – if you strip it back enough the message is the same. Christmas is about the people you love. Not how much you spend on them, just the fact you have loved ones in the first place. If they're far away, it hurts. If they're gone, it hurts. That's normal, and nobody should have to pretend it doesn't hurt like hell for the sake of a holiday.

I'm going to close this ramble with a quote from Ben Goldacre (you know, the Bad Science guy, amazing hair). This is his response a couple of years ago when he was asked what he'd be thinking about at Christmas. "...I'm going to be thinking about what a magical and amazing place the world is without any recourse to nonsense; that people can get pain relief simply from taking a sugar pill, or a salt-water injection; that we can have an almost psychic sense that a friend is in trouble, from barely perceptible unconscious social cues; that improbable things really do happen; and people really can meet, and fall in love, with a depth so great that it feels as if it was always meant to be. These are all things to be celebrated, because even if there is no destiny and no magic, the effects are the same."

Merry Christmas, however you celebrate it, whatever you call it.