Ed, Greg & PZ have commented on the strange reaction of the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary toward Richard Dawkins’ enthusiasm for Christmas traditions. So “why would an atheist want to sing Christmas carols?”
The same reason that the study and reading of literature has not been reduced to physics. We humans appreciate great stories, and we can conceive in our mind’s eye ideas which may not be true, but we enjoy the play of those ideas nonetheless. One does not have to be a Greek pagan to appreciate the beauty and power of the Iliad, and in fact for centuries pious Christians have been moved by the poems of Homer without acceding to the reality of its relgious vision. For them Homer was not about the Truth of the gods, but the Truth of human experience. We don’t need to appeal to a classical education though, anyone who reads a piece of moving fiction can be emotionally impacted, without entertaining that the narrative is real in a positivistic sense.
Today many Christians complain about a “War against Christmas,” but they might be surprised to know that until recently the soldiers in that war were avowed Christians! During the 1650s the ascendant Puritans in England waged a war against Christmas because of its associations with “Popery” and paganism. The reasoned argument was that Christmas had no Biblical foundation, that was not grounded in Truth, and that a host of practices were obviously extra-Biblical interpolations from the pagan milieu of their ancestors, residue from the age of darkness before the Savior. Politically, the practice of Christmas traditions was a sign that perhaps one was for the Cavalier cause or a recusant Catholic. In the the name of utilitarian economic efficiency these early fundamentalists also abolished most holidays and religious festivals because they had no Biblical grounding, and so were not rooted in Truth, and were a waste of time and without any utility. In may ways I think these early Protestant fundamentalists had much in common with latter day social engineers, such as the Khmer Rouge, who seemed driven by an unnatural and distorted Benthanmite conception of what drives human nature and what gives joy and fullness to our lives.
I believe in human nature. We are not a blank slate into which one can pour in prior values and assume that our lives will be shaped by these exogenous inputs through a chain of necessary propositions. We enjoy good food, music, the company of family, gossip, socialization and the broader succor of our community. These are not social constructions, they are are the core of our humanity, and any belief system or model of human action which neglects these natural impulses will lead us astray. I am not denying flexibility of the parameters, but that flexibility exhibits constraints and stress when deviated from the central tendency.
It is in vogue for many evangelical Christians to assert that Jesus is a reason for the season. I think it is more complicated than this. I do not believe it is a coincidence that midwinter festivals are common across the northern hemisphere, that we look to the day of the longest night and see the rebirth of the New Year. This is common sense, and rooted in some basic human intuitions. The historical record seems to make it clear that the Christmas holiday is an a co-option of prior practices, traditions and customs. This does not deny that for some Christians it is reasonable to assert that Jesus is the reason for the season, for it is their reason, but that does not deny the validity of other points of view. Just because Christian rituals such as baptism seem to have to their antecedents in pagan traditions such as Mithraism does not mean that baptism is not a Christian ritual, it simply means that it is not necessarily a Christian ritual.
We humans have a need for many of the things which Christmas offers. Very few would deny the nobility of many of the values which are espoused during Christmas (though most would offer more caution as to the materialism which the season has been consumed by!). I have known of atheists who have an aversion to Christmas because of its Christian associations. I disagree with this tack because as an atheist my disagreements with Christianity are not with some vague essence of Christianity, but specific truth claims made by Christians and the actions of some Christians. I do not reject charity because Christians espouse this as a virtue! And neither do I reject Christmas necessarily due to the fact that Christians claim it. I have asserted in this space before that I think that the average human has a strong impulse toward religious behavior (this is inclusive of those who are not members of organized religion but accept supernaturalism as a valid way of looking at the world). I believe this is due to the modal human cognitive architecture. I do not believe there is one reason that people are religious, rather, religions encapsulate many dimensions of human existence and aspirations. I believe that the emphasis that some theists placle upon God is sincere, and I also accept that a supernatural agent is a necessary precondition for a vigorous religious movement. But, I do not believe that God stripped away of the accretions of community, ritual, and pageantry would be very attractive; the idea of God, in contemporary parlance a personal relationship with God, is not sufficient for religion. Older Christian traditions know this and manifest their beliefs in a concrete fashion with ritual, art and architecture. The nondenominational Protestant movement in the United States knows this as well, and utilize modern marketing techniques to attract religious “clients” and offer a host of non-spiritual “services.” I do not accept as a matter of fact that God exists, and so in good faith I could never be a member of a theistic religion. But that does not mean that I reject all the other elements which are appealing within religion, what David S. Wilson would refer to as the “horizontal” aspects (communal) as opposed to the “vertical” (supernatural).
This is a long way of saying that a little common sense could go a long way to clarifying these issues.
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