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An atheist.  Not as in I don’t believe in God, but as in there is no God.  Just like there is no invisible lizard living in my ear, or there is no monster under my bed.  That kind of atheist.  An atheist who finds it harder and harder, the older he gets, to understand how mature people actually cogi-generate religion.  If tomorrow I were to read a study, say, in the New York Times, that says when questioned intensively 90% of adults admit they only practice religion to satisfy their families–that they don’t actually believe in God–I’d exclaim, “Oh, now I understand!”

 

You might wonder why I buy a Christmas tree, then.  You might be puzzled to find a cheerful Christmas card in the mail, signed, “Love, Motormanmark.”  If you were to see me in my home, you’d be well within your rights to accuse, “What the hell are you doing singing “Deck the Halls” and mixing up eggnog?!”

 

In fact, I was raised Catholic.  My mother was a Catholic school teacher, my great aunts were nuns.  I was an altar boy at 13, a member of the ultra-devout “Legion of Mary” a year later…, all before I grew up and ventured away from the ideas others had passed to me.

 

In our home, Christmas was the most special holiday of the year.  It wasn’t just the presents.  It was the music, the food, the good cheer.  The Grinch and Charlie Brown on television.   Of course, the streets of my Pennsylvania home town bustled with happy people wishing you merry, while the wind blew cold and the dark fell early.  Tinny music streaming from State Street.  You may relate.

 

Even midnight mass.  It was the one mass of the year that promised not to be martyrizingly boring.  One tender song after another, everyone singing, everyone in fine spirts.  What’s not to love?

 

And then, the story.  Well, we never knew the real Biblical story of Christmas.  Probably no one at a modern midnight mass does, either.  No, modern Americans have developed a story that suits us mythologically, even though it is full of details not mentioned in or even in conflict with the Bible–or which are represented in none of the early Biblical sources.  (The early sources are the only relevant ones, as, in the age of Christ, when everything came from very unreliable spoken word traditions, the farther you get from an event in time, the more ridiculous the stories become.  That said, the first of these stories came a good 35 years after Christ’s life, written in Greek, while Christ spoke Aramaic, so even the early sources require a large scoop of faith to purchase.)

 

The fantastic story we told went as follows: 

 

A poor man and his pregnant wife are wandering and hungry.  They bed down for the night on the straw of a manger, and she gives birth to a beautiful baby boy.  At the same time, a bright star bursts to life in the sky directly over the manger.  Far and wide, angels appear, telling of a new child that has been born–a child who will lead the world to peace.  Kings, seeking guidance, follow the star, bringing their finest gifts.  The story ends with the great kings on their knees before this child, acknowledging the greatness that will arise from this ignoble station.  And the animals speak.

 

It is appealing to modern Americans in the same way the Horatio Alger stories were.  I still love the Christmas story.  It tells that the true meaning of life has nothing to do with cash and flashy cars and power over others.  The most virtuous of us will be vulnerable and broke.  It is the love that guides us that brings virtue.  It is our selflessness.

 

So, I still tell this story to my kids.  Of course I do. 

 

I buy a tree.  We deck it with balls and garland and lights, just the way my Christian forebears did, just the way our pagan ancestors would’ve done if they’d had electricity thousands of years ago, the tree being one of the pagan traditions predating Christmas.

 

I play carols on my guitar for my kids before bed.  When my little 4-year-old asked me the other night what “say your prayers” means in the song, “Here comes Santa Claus,” I told her, “Well, some people believe there is a person who lives in the sky who created everything, and they like to talk to him quietly before they go to bed.”  I added, to explain better, that I don’t believe in the creator person.  Testing me, her eyes sparkled, and she said, “I do.”  I smiled warmly and shut the lights.  It’s fine with me.  We had much the same conversation about Santa last month walking home from the Thanksgiving parade. 

 

It’s not indoctrination.  It’s just story fun.  My first two older children are atheists, not because I have neglected telling them anything or prejudiced them, but just because they have not been denied any knowledge, and no one ever told them they needed to believe in any particular story or that they’d be good to believe this or bad to believe that.

 

They need to be as loving and as selfless as they can manage.  Those things are trained in my home, maybe more than in the average Christian home.

 

Parents need to inspire kids with special times and stories and songs.  A child’s innocence, though, is, to me, sacred.  I will not tell a child how to think any more than I will expose them to a sexual movie or allow them to play a bloody video game.  There will come a time for a child to give up their innocence–to experience personal understanding of what they choose to inspire their living, just as there will come a time for them to experience an awareness of sexuality and aggression.  I suppose the time will come in their teenaged years, at a point when they are very ready for it, and only they will know when to take the step.  It will be their moment, not mine.  And that’s just the way it goes.