Ideas for a "Jesus Free Christmas"

[deepinthewoods]

My niece and her Oh will be coming to stay with us over christmas, she was born and lives abroad. I can't wait and want to make it special for her.
She was raised in a very religious- christian- home, and part of that ( I won't bore you with too many details) was the fact that although her family celebrated christmas massively, it was very centered around the church.
She was forbidden to mention santa Claus, they had no tree, no mistletoe, didn't hang up stockings, gifts very low key etc. these were considered pagan and therefore evil aspects of christmas.

She is an adult now and an athiest. She also wants to experience a "jesus free christmas" her words- this year-she has never experienced one.

I am an athiest anyway so have always had a secular christmas- no jesus here either, but I am looking for ideas to have a memorable secular/pagan christmas for my niece and our family. Any ideas?

Sounds funny To me as the very word Christmas contains Christ!.. But anyway, maybe do gifts, nice turkey & trimmings, crackers, Christmas tree, decorations, nice drinks etc, and just don't go to Church or do anything religious? Guess it's pretty hard to avoid any religious content altogether as a lot of the traditional carols are Jesus themed. How old is she? You could always do a mini stocking for her & partner if you are feeling generous and she's never had that? To be honest if you're atheist surely it will be pretty non-religious anyway?

Go to Stonehenge, paint yourself blue and stick some deer antlers on your heads.. .

In my experience, 99% of British Christmas traditions have nothing to do with Jesus. As long as you avoid going to midnight mass or watching Carols from Kings on the TV, the rest is pretty much all up for grabs: you can have crackers and Christmas pudding, put up a tree and decorations, give each other presents, go to a pantomime, visit Santa's grotto, see who's going to get bumped off on the Christmas edition of East Enders, even help out at Crisis at Christmas etc etc.

oh well, that religious upbringing didn't work, did it?

make it a midwinter festival. Presents, lights, done.

Thanks, I guess I just want her to experience a bit of the whole Santa magic that she didn't have a child. She is 32 and a Post Doctoral Researcher, so a lot of the Santa things may be a bit childish. I will do stockings for everyone ( seven of us over christmas), I guess even making biscuits for Santa is fun for adults if you have had an egg nog or three.

specialsubject- no it didn't work out for my niece, in fact she holds a great deal of bitterness towards my sister for the years of indoctrination.
Her sister, my other niece is very devout still though, and interesting to see that this Easter she - like her mother- has refused to have anything to do with eggs- chocolate or otherwise, or bunnies for her three children. So the upbringing worked for her.

"A description of pagan Yule practices is provided (notes are Hollander's own):

It was ancient custom that when sacrifice was to be made, all farmers were to come to the heathen temple and bring along with them the food they needed while the feast lasted. At this feast all were to take part of the drinking of ale. Also all kinds of livestock were killed in connection with it, horses also; and all the blood from them was called hlaut [ sacrificial blood ], and hlautbolli, the vessel holding the blood; and hlautteinar, the sacrificial twigs [ aspergills ]. These were fashioned like sprinklers, and with them were to be smeared all over with blood the pedestals of the idols and also the walls of the temple within and without; and likewise the men present were to be sprinkled with blood. But the meat of the animals was to be boiled and served as food at the banquet. Fires were to be lighted in the middle of the temple floor, and kettles hung over them. The sacrificial beaker was to be borne around the fire, and he who made the feast and was chieftain, was to bless the beaker as well as all the sacrificial meat.[10]"

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yule

You could have a traditional Pagan Yule celebration, sacrifice lots of animals and cover yourself and the walls with blood. Oh and drink lots of ale!

Not sure that would go down well capsium- she is also a vegan.

Yule has been celebrated in Scotland for many years without the sacrifices.

Oh, will just have to make do with a Yule log then and drink the copious amounts of ale...

Will you toast Odin?

Njoror, Freyr and the Queen?

We do a Jesus and Santa-free Christmas every year. Tree, decorations, presents, food and drink - all non-religious.

Is she from a non-UK background? My DM is Danish and I've had a lot of fun doing Scandinavian Christmas traditions - making biscuits, Danish Christmas dinner recipes, specific decorations. With Boxing Day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day you can fit in a lot of meals and have a festive season rather than just one day. There may be some quite pagan looking traditions from her background and if not you can always steal them from somewhere else

Then you can do other 'special' things - in my family we always went to the Nutcracker as a child. Eventually we got bored of this but always went into London to go to a musical as a Christmas thing.

Best things about Christmas though are the traditions you invent yourself. In our crackers this year we got a set of charades clues. Being slightly drunk we decided to play and it turned out brilliant - we are now planning drunken boardgames for next year. The invented tradition of buying each other weird liqueurs from places we've been on holiday may have massively contributed to the success

OK vegan Christmas I can't help you with

we are a Christian family and we have all the trees/decs/santa and all as well as a crib and the carols and a celebration of thebirth of Christ.

best of both worlds.

you should get a REAL tree
and lots of evergreens
and loads of food (vegan should be easy- nut roast- pud with veg suet)
wine
shame she didn't get to have FC I think you need Dcs for that- do you have any? she could join in with writing letters to/from FC, and the whole carrot and mince pie thing- but only if there are DCs around really

Great ideas shalli, we always get a real tree, but love the idea of evergrees, we could decorate the house. My youngest is 14 so a bit old for FC, but still loves to join in the fun. I will do the whole stocking thing, and sneak down to fill them after everyone has gone to bed. Shame it will be her first ever stocking at christmas. May do some midwinter magic too, mulled wine and sparkle.

kundry love the idea of charades- especially if there is alcohol involved.

You could start by calling it a midwinter festival or yule or solstice rather than Christmas.

My father (evangelical christian but also a bit weird and humourless) was like that and my childhood Christmases were similar to the OP's niece - no Father Christmas, stockings, reindeer, snowmen, etc. All too pagan. We didn't particularly mind, we had presents similarly to most families and I think for most children that's the most important thing.

Unsurprisingly, 2 of us out of 3 children in my family grew up to be raving atheists.

Great idea Madd- I celebrate midwinter anyway. Has your 3rd sibling stayed with their faith?

Yes, 3rd sibling is a keen Christian (like my parents) but does have Christmas trees etc.

We also didn't have easter eggs (pagan), tooth fairy (ditto), or a few other childhood norms. My father took Christianity very literally.

Can I ask about your transition to atheism? How easy was that? When did it happen?
My niece has had a long and hard journey away from her childhood faith, and she still has difficulties. Although now a vocal atheist she hasn't found it easy.
I wouldn't know as I was pretty much brought up without faith - apart from the school stuff.

Your family sound much like mine- they don't have the tooth fairy either! Nor pop music, or many TV shows, or newspapers with horoscopes in them. My 4 year old great nephew just had a lesson at school teachig them that santa claus is really satan- unsing the anagram to prove it no less), he goes to a private baptist school too, him and his siblings have a very controlled environment in terms of exposure to anything but the Baptist faith, at school, home, curch and social life ( they don't socialise with anyone outside of the church)

This is the upbrining my atheist niece had too- does it sound familiar?

Love that the sister won't even have easter eggs. I am part of a choir in a Catholic church and our priest gave out easter eggs to the altar servers and the choir. Being a fair trade man he bought Fair Trade eggs for everyone....very nice they were too.

It's bizarre- I think the catholic Church are more relaxed in many areas compared to some churches, despite the heavier dogma.

...adding my vote to the Midwinter festival suggestion. When I talked to our priest he pretty much said that Christianity took the Midwinter festival from Pagan tradition as nobody knows when Jesus was born....or when he died.

I wasn't brought up with faith and have gone from Atheism to Paganism to Catholicism...go figure that one out! Now I am more of a spiritual than religious person....and I see lots of parallels between the Pagan and Catholic ceremonies...incense, candles etc.

Christmas is a magical time....and it doesn't have to be religious to be beautiful and meaningful. Go with the while Midwinter thing....decorate a yule log from a forest, have loads of candles, stocking gifts to celebrate Midwinter and the new year to come. It will be lovely.

Thanks jake- interesting to note the parallels you make between pagan and catholic ceremonies. Many years ago I attended a Catholic Christmas Eve Midnight Mass at a tiny rural catholic church high in the Abruzzo Mountains in Italy. The atmosphere was electric. Thick smoke from incense, incatations, the ritutal,the swaying, the candles, the atmosphere was so intense and rich you could cut it with a knife.

At the time my OH was a worshipping pagan, only a week before I had been invited to a ritual with his friends in the UK- again the atmosphere was rich and heady, frankincence and myrrh, incenese and chanting, the robes and ritual.

I was struck by how similar the Catholic and pagan ceremonies were- and depsite me being a bystander in both events, the atmosphere and reaction of those involved was the same.
Really interesting.

Actually deepinthewoods my upbringing wasn't THAT weird, though I knew quite a few families like that who only sent their children to small private seriously Christian schools etc. My parents are C of E and we went to mainstream schools and no restrictions on tv etc. And they aren't creationists.
But my father did have Calvinist inclinations on things like Fun and Frivolity. He doesn't really get why people would bother with imaginative play and stories, and life is strictly divided into Truth (eg in the bible etc) and Not-Truth (Father christmas, easter bunny, tooth fairy, Rudolph).

Transition to atheism for me and my sister (and lots of our friends from those churches) happened after leaving home and going to university. also, for me, it came after meeting more seriously fundamentalist types (American southern baptists, house church evangelicals) and that clashed with lots of my views on feminism, homophobia etc and feminism won. (in the CofE I grew up in they had (still have I believe but I don't pay attention any more) active feminists but the fundamentalist churches won't permit this and that was a dealbreaker for me).