‘Tis the Season to be Secular
Congratulations to Harvard College Sophomore Dan Robinson, an officer in our Harvard Secular Society, who recently published an essay on Humanism and Christmas in the Harvard Independent. An excerpt: Dan and his fellow students will be celebrating Christmas and other Winter holidays from a Humanistic and secular point of view on Saturday Dec. 15, at Harvard’s Lowell House, in an “All-Out Holiday Party,” a multicultural winter holiday composite celebration where Harvard students and friends will be bringing out the secular in all the season’s holidays, as well as creating new Humanist traditions. For more information, see the event’s page on facebook. UPDATE: The Harvard Secular Society Holiday Party was featured on NPR’s extremely popular show, “Weekend Edition”, and the story was in NPR’s top ten “Most Emailed Stories” for over 2 days! For more info and to hear the story, click here.
Much like we can enjoy participating in bizarre rituals that celebrate Harry Potter without believing the stories are true, we can celebrate Christmas, sing religious Christmas carols, and engage in truly irrational rituals without betraying our secular beliefs. I enjoy Christmas because it is a point of commonality I share with a vast community. Secular holidays simply cannot compete with the enormous subculture developed around Christmas — including hundreds of movies, songs, and traditions. Ultimately, Christmas and almost all other religious holidays are about other people, not about God.
