For those who don't celebrate Christmas

[zakisrage]

What do you normally do on Christmas? What did you do this year?

Being Muslim, my family doesn't celebrate Christmas. (The most recent Muslim holiday, Mawlid was two weeks ago, but that's nothing like Christmas.) The next Muslim holiday isn't for a while, so on most days Christmas is just a normal day of the year. I do get gifts from Christian friends sometimes.

Mostly, I visit friends. Yesterday, I visited my friend Ashley, who is Catholic, and had dinner with his family. Ashley even had a gift for me - he got me a new tie. I told him he didn't have to give me a gift, but he insisted on it.

My parents usually don't do anything since they get the day off.

 

[Aulos]

Well, I'm an atheist and irreligious, but was raised as a Christian. It's hard for me to move myself away from Christmas. It was never celebrated very religiously in my family. I see nothing about decorating trees and putting up strings of lights that have anything to do with religion. From my research, they're ancient traditions more closely tied to the winter solstice, and celebrating the days beginning to get longer again.

I love winter, so winter decorations make me happy. (on the flip side, I do not celebrate anything about Easter, as I do not like Spring)

Still, I will celebrate it as "Christmas" for my family... Which means just saying the word "Christmas" and nothing more. My parents used to attend Christmas eve services, but it's been a while.

 

[zakisrage]

I understand.

I've shared in on Christmas events many a time, but I feel like observing it when no one in my family celebrates it would be kind of silly (that, and my parents would probably get annoyed).

One of my friends, Toby, is Jewish, and he always tells me how left-out he feels on Christmas because he doesn't celebrate it. He told me he didn't want to be one of those people with a "Hanukkah bush" (which really isn't a thing in the Australian Jewish community, but Toby has relatives in America whom he keeps in touch with, so he knows what one is) because it's not genuine - it's the same as a Christian wanting to have a menorah. Both of us agreed that, people who aren't of Christian background shouldn't feel pressured to celebrate Christmas.

 

[dragon_nataku]

... do people get pressured to celebrate Christmas if they're not Christian/Catholic? I didn't know that was a thing (possibly because I grew up in Latin America, which is pretty homogeneous in its Catholicism, so everyone celebrated it anyway). As for my family, we haven't been to church since I was eight (I'm 33 now) and Christmas for us is just "presents for everybody!" and "stuff your face with tons of food at lunch cause mum's making enough to feed an army." We don't really do anything religious for it (hell, we haven't even put up a tree in like 4-5 years). I think even when we did go to church we only ever went to Christmas mass like once.

Personally, my boyfriend and I are going to be raising our future kids as Buddhists (cause his family is Buddhist and my religion is "meh?"), but I'll probably do the same thing that my family does with Christmas (i.e., non-religious excuse to give out presents) because I'd totally be looking for any excuse to spoil my kids ^<__<^;; Besides, here in America Christmas is super-commercialised anyway so I'm not sure it's even a religious holiday here anymore? (I mean, I know lots of Americans try to claim it is but if they're not going to church on Christmas does it really count...? I honestly don't know)