My client company has Good Friday off. I assumed it must be a banking holiday, but no, the banks are open.
The question of atheist holidays occurred to me. For fun we should take over popular religious holidays, rename them, fit secular accomplishments to them and suggest appropriate celebrations. Emphasis on suggest. I think what atheists don't need is yet another governing body. Religion has stolen and reworked most of their holidays, so we might as well make them better, and many holidays are celebrated secularly, anyway. Just how many unwitting atheists are out there I wonder?
A quick Google check since I'm probably not the first to have this idea:
http://atheism.about.com/od/adviceforatheists/a/hol_index.htm
http://atheism.about.com/od/christmasholidayseason/p/AtheistsXmas.htm
http://baconeatingatheistjew.blogspot.com/2006/10/atheists-lets-make-our-own-holiday-on.html
Well, on page one at least there seems to be no ideas to co-opt religious holidays. At least for fun, I think this is our job.
I'm not feeling very creative today. Well, okay then Good Friday is now Better Friday where you are encouraged to rest your creativity. It is then refreshed on the following Sunday, so I'll wait until at least then to fit some background to it and invent celebrations.
MLK day does not get changed. Although MLK was a reverend, the holiday and the man's accomplishments are quite secular.
Edit: Doggone it, I misspelled the original title. Apparently creativity is not the only thing damaged on Better Friday. The visible title is fixed, but the url will still have "athiest".
Friday, March 21, 2008
Atheist Holidays
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4 comments:
i always thought it would be cool if we had our own holidays, but it seems like we just want to be like the other religions...and isnt that sort of anti the point of atheism? how ever i would love to get the day off of work due to an 'atheist holiday' ;)
Hmm...well what do we (or should we) celebrate that isn't celebrated? How about scientific achievement? Einstein's birthday (March 14), Nikola Tesla's birthday (July 10), a day celebrating technology (Pascal's adding machine, the telephone, the car, the modern computer). A little boring, but it's a start.
But I think we should have a couple of other days, maybe a No Afterlife Day (do whatever you want in celebration of the only life you've got).
I dunno. When you really think about it, a LOT of celebrations are really ours: Thanksgiving is for eating and watching tv, Christmas is for buying stuff for your kids, St. Patrick's Day and Mardi Gras are for getting drunk and digging music. We've got a LOT of holidays.
that would be awesome if we had a no afterlife day! but i also think if the christians can celebrate jesus's bday, we should celebrate that of einstein or even darwin.
I'm still in the early stages of exploring what atheism means to me. I don't really envision a replacement for religion, but I do intend to coopt--at least in writing--religious traditions converted to atheism if only for my own amusement.
But I don't seriously think there would be atheist holidays. I think such a thing would be just some of the holidays we already have with the same things we do only without the nonsecular hogwash to go along with it.
My creativity didn't come back on Sunday, so apparently driving several hundred miles is not how to celebrate after Better Friday.
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