Celebrating the true meaning of Christmas- as an atheist
Picture credit: GAZA: “CHRIST IN THE RUBBLE” BY KELLY LATIMORE @kellylatimoreicons
You don’t have to believe in God to be spiritual. Spirituality is simply an acknowledgment and practice of the things that make us deeply human- awareness, connectedness, kindness.
It’s almost tempting to write “The G-word” in place of God. Because Crusades, Inquisitions, Televangelists, Jihads…
As Mick Jagger wrote from Lucifer’s perspective,
“I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the gods they made”.
This is why most people these days refer to “The Universe” when citing an experience or expression of faith which would have formerly invoked a reference to God. This, along with the problem of pain, is why many people consider themselves atheists.
But I digress.
The traditional Christian perspective on Christmas is of course that the Creator was born into the world as a mortal baby. Without getting into a (quite legitimate) debate as to the intra- and extra-Biblical support for this story, I’d like to look at it on an archetypal level, no God required.
Even without a belief in God- and I would like to point out here that atheism is as much a faith position as deism, since nobody can 100% prove NOR disprove the existence of God- it is possible to hold a concept of divinity in a humanist sense. We could say that everything that is fine, noble, mysterious, beautiful and perfect about us equates to our divine nature. Despite everything, there is something essentially wonderful about us, within us. Our intrinsic potentiality for wisdom, love, kindness and all the virtues we notice in the saints and sages of history.
And there it is. The archetype of God coming “down” (why is it always down?) to Earth as a tiny child born into a vagrant, impoverished family in a despotic, occupied land is a brilliant expression of the human condition.
We find ourselves in a troubled, war torn, ecologically threatened world… and yet… We can feel inside ourselves that same sense of Christmas wonder when we meet the best in humanity, the kindness of strangers, the warmth of family, the fleeting magic of romantic love, large or small acts of bravery and self-sacrifice which go unreported millions of times every day.
As humans, we can say that we are the Divine nature incarnated. We embody the ideal of perfection, even as Michelangelo found that perfect image of David inside a rough, misshapen block of marble.
Christmas can be about the wonder that our consciousness has come into this world. This idea can inspire us with hope and the determination to be the highest expression of each of our own individual natures, thus contributing to the collective good.
And that is something worth celebrating, don’t you think?
