Christmas presents question.
Posted on: December 23, 2010 - 11:30am
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Christmas presents question.
In some European countries, the New Year is the time for presents (and even for a russian analogue of Santa). This does not seem to be the same in the U.S. where the Christmas is the presents day. I and my wife are slightly confused, when is the time for non-believers to give presents to kids and each other?
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I would go with whenever you damn well feel like doing it. Perhaps according to your local custom?
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I would go with "whatever leaves the kids not feeling left out", which would likely be Dec. 25th.
Political agendas are fun, but only to the childless...
edit;
There are probably some exceptions
I was under the impression that Grandpa Frost was celebrated a few days after new year's...
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
You are SO damned lucky in some respects...
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
It' s still one of the 12 days of the ancient Yuletide festival, it sounds like a great time to celebrate their Russian heritage so do it Russian style and ' dost nastrovia' !!!!!!!
"Very funny Scotty; now beam down our clothes."
VEGETARIAN: Ancient Hindu word for "lousy hunter"
If man was formed from dirt, why is there still dirt?
In UK kids receive presents on the morning 25th. I think that must give them a bad sleep, how can they wait till the morning? In my country it's on the evening 24th. Generally, it's a symbolism of how the baby Jesus received the gifts from three persian mages. For the sake of brevity, people tell their children that Baby Jesus brings the gifts, but that is terribly inexact.
At the same time, it has a lot to do with St. Nicholas, who was a famous gift-giving greek bishop. He is the basic figure from which emerged american Santa Klaus and russian Grandpa Frost - if you want to keep your kids historically precise. Here St. Nicholas day is 6th december and children also receive small gifts. St. Nicholas visits houses together with angel and devil and judges children if they were nice or naughty. If they were good, angel gives them some little presents, chocolate figures, fruits, etc... If not, the devil gives them potato peels, onion and coal, together with a good scaring, iron chain ringing and brandishing a sack into which he might catch the most naughty children and take them to Hell.
Local heathens might enjoy also other national traditions. My country is the place where on Easter guys beat girls with wicker stick with ribbons or soak them with cold water ( probably to make the tits show through clothing) and for that they receive painted eggs - or more commonly a shot of plum brandy, money, etc from the parents. This is obviously a pagan tradition of fertility cult with shamelessly phallic symbolism of wicker stick, just like a month later erecting...a May pole.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
The Grandpa Frost used to be the guy bringing presents on January 7th, the Orthodox Church Christmas. But, I am even not sure if this was not the New Year some times even before the Great October Revolution. After the Revolution, the New Year was an official main holiday and the Grandpa Frost was an official winter personage coming on the New Year with presents for kids.
We are actually about to split presents between 25th and 1st. This may have a message for our kids that it is a good idea to have two Santas and learn two languages.
But I am kind of curious, how do other atheists deal with this when they may have no big New Year tradition in their past.
Our most common (Australian) tradition at New Year is some kind of spectacular public firework display.
My most memorable New Year was Dec 31, 2002, in Red Square, Moscow...
At an ambient temperature around -30 to -40 C.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Feel free to give me presents anytime
And I thought I was self-obsessed...
I'm about to celebrate Christmas with my family. I don't see anything odious about that, and I don't see how any other atheists should need to either.
If I had kids I certainly wouldn't want to have them miss out on Christmas, while all their friends didn't.
But I think it depends alot on your community. In America, in some areas, there will be Jewish Kids, Muslim Kids, Buddhist kids and so on, at your kids local school, and they will all "miss out" on Christmas, so that means your kids won't feel as left out if you choose to do something else, but otherwise I think you should just have a christmas Party with them.
Remember, Christmas is, for every family, a very personal thing, so you don't have to worry that you have to "Jesus-it-up" for it to be "authentic". The only thing Christian about Christmas is the name: the Tree is pagan, the Santa thing is just tradition, and the presents-giving-thing is an entirely secular thing, and always has been.
The Holiday itself looses all reference to Christianity, unless you actively invite it in.
In America you have it even easier because so many of your traditional Christmas songs have nothing to do with Jesus. "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" and "Let it snow" e.t.c.
However, here in Denmark, Christmas is called "Jul" (after the old Pagan yule-festival, which is just a winterfestival), so we have that, and for my family, Christmas is only about one thing: Family traditions. We sing about Jesus, because that's part of our personal tradition, but beyond that, there's nothing Christian about what we do tomorrow night (Yes we do it on Christmas Eve too). And my nieces and nephews don't think long and hard about some archaic lyrics of some psalms we sing. They like that we join hands and dance around the christmas tree, and they like singing, but none of them worry about the Jesus-story. As far as they are conserned, we are celebrating a fairie tale, no more important than Lord of The Rings (which of course, is exactly what we ARE doing).
So feel free to have a party, and call it whatever you want. Remember the First Amendment.
And as far as I see it, there's no need to be really contrarian about it. Since you DON'T believe in God, you can do whatever you want. It's just a farrie tale, so you can't invite some kind of curse, by having an "un-authentic" Christmas.
Well I was born an original sinner
I was spawned from original sin
And if I had a dollar bill for all the things I've done
There'd be a mountain of money piled up to my chin
You and me both...
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
Thank you. It should be fun to have a New Year in Denmark. I personally do not care about when to celebrate whatever holiday, it's always work related anyway. But this is more about how to explain this to kids. So I wondered who is doing what. Actually, this question extends to the realm of Santa Clauzz too.
Sorry, I have already three girls, but otherwise you would be at the top of my present recipient list.
Luminen, Are you in Belgium?
That's where I work at the moment.
What is atheism good for, when state selection procedures and orders are all corrupted for private profit? I wish good luck to atheists in their fight against theocracy and so on, but there is still a long way to civilization.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Incredibly pedantic technical nit that this may be but -40 C = -40 F.
You can thank my early 70's grade school teachers for that one. When I was a kid, we were told that we had to have the conversion factors burned into our brains because “By the year 2000, the US will be on the metric system”.
Yah, that worked out well. Today, I have the seriously useless skill of being able to flip back and forth between the two systems. Although TBH, the few times that it actually matters in real communication, I pretty much ignore the matter and just use metric because that is what everyone else uses.
For example, in my hobby of high end computers, we track the temperature of a microprocessor in metric. Really, it is a number and it does not need a scale factor so that I can “know what it means”. A processor that is running at 65 C is going to have terrible problems (probably the OS is going to crash). Who really cares what that means in terms of a “real temperature”?
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Ehh, I knew that -40 thing, I was wondering whether to mention it in passing. I would have, I think, if I was just going to mention the one temperature, -40.
I don't know exactly what the coldest temp I experienced on that trip was, but I have burned into my brain the thought: "I have paid to go to Siberia in mid-winter during a cold snap". That used to be a famous punishment...
Luckily we did not have a lot of wind.
Just near the end of that walk through the Kremlin, my digital camera decided it had cooled down quite enough, and wouldn't take any more shots.
It was around -20C during the day in Moscow...
Still, quite a memorable trip. I went through Moscow again in September '04, more comfortable weather, much easier to operate a camera.
I have also been to the Antarctic Peninsula, in summer, not much below freezing, but a few days we had strong winds. Chill factor...
So much of a contrast to a typical Xmas where I live in Brisbane, in the 90's F.
We have so far been spared a lot of hot weather this year, thanks to a lot of rain. A lot of flooding around the country, and even, bizarrely, a few inches of snow one day on one of our mountain ski resorts down near the southern coast.
It has been raining in bursts as I type, very early on Xmas day.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
I'd say, whenever you want... We open evrything on Xmas eve... As I write this, I am a happy fella...
www.RichWoodsBlog.com
Funny...... Growing up in Yuma, AZ, 20+ miles from the Mexican border, I remember that a christmas without the fans going as a very cold year. Maybe not 90 F, but 80 or so was normal. So normal, that moving north - way north to central Washington state - was a total shock. It was 65 F in JUNE. About froze to death when winter showed up in November and continued on to March.
No rain here just yet, though it is predicted for later today.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
I have friends who open presents on christmas eve, some on christmas morning, and one friend's family opens presents twice. Christmas eve they gather at her mother's house and they have a gag gift exchange. Christmas morning, everyone stays home and opens their "real" presents.
If you haven't played the gag gift exchange game, it goes like this. Wrap up any old thing, hopefully something kind of funny to give as a gift. All the presents are numbered and put in a pile. People then draw a number. If it is your own number, put it back and draw another number. Open your gift to loud laughter and hooting. The next person may request the just opened gift for their gift, or they may draw another number and open another gift. If they take the first gift, the first person draws another number and opens another gift. This continues until the last person has their choice of all the opened gifts or the last unopened present. Keep the group small, this can go on for hours.
I had a friend who was raised jewish and married a christian. The christian grandparents made a big deal of christmas. She also celebrated hannukah with her son and her family. My sister is Jehovah Witness and raised her children without any presents or tree or fancy dinner. So not celebrating is just as religious as celebrating. So pick any old day, your children won't particularly care, they just want something to brag about when school restarts.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
Thank you all for good ideas.
We decided that we will have Santa this morning and our kids will have Santa this morning and the Grandpa Frost on the New Year.
cj, thanks for the game idea, we can't do it this time since we are in the bible belt and have no friends here. (no families either)
Merry Christmas!