Introduction
The holiday season can be stressful, and holiday blues are not imaginary. While the connection between holilday celebrations and suicide rate increases has been debunked as myth, a survey by the American Psychological Association found that “38% of people felt their stress levels increased during the holiday season.” Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a form of clinical depression known to increase during the winter months in the Northern hemisphere due to changes in the duration of sunlight. These changes affect our body rhythms, neurochemical balance, and mental outlook when darkness lasts longer and cold weather keeps us cooped up indoors.
Many factors contribute to our mental outlook during the holidays, isolation being one of them. Another can be the perceived discrepancy between the joy celebrating the holidays is supposed to bring and the reality of our personal and political lives. If the joy and peace on earth celebrating a deity’s alleged date of birth seem lacking, where does one turn to receive such comfort during the long, dreary, lonely days of winter? Other orgranized religious holidays such as Kwanasaa and Hanukkah are peculiar to the ethnic groups in which they originated. And, similar to the pagan holidays of Saturnalia and St. Lucy’s Day, they serve as calendrial placeholders in substiituting winter solstice celebrations for the Christmas holiday.
Atheists, agnostics, and undecideds should have some means of expressing and expunging their hopes and fears during the holidays. To meet that need, let’s go beyond the evolution of Father Christmas by identifying three unusual secular celebrations to beat those holiday blues:
Burning the Clocks
An “antidote to the commercializaation of Christmas,” the Burning of Clocks event parades willow-made clocks and lanterns through the streets of Brighton England down to the beach. Upon their arrival, a raging bonfire consumes them to the accompaniment of fireworks. Regarded as an investment of the participants’ “wishes, hopes and fears,” the festive burning of these symbols signals the passage of time and spiritual rejuvenation for the upcoming year.
Festivus
Arising from an episode of the Seinfeld TV sitcom, Festivus has grown into a secular holiday observed all across the nation. Celebrated on December 23rd as an “alternative to the pressures and commercialism of the Christmas season,” it spoofs traditional ceremonies with its bare aluminum pole stuck in a living room corner, wrestling competitions among household members and guests, a joyous feast, and “an airing of grievances” about disappointments suffered throughout the year. Building on its initial popularity, notables such as former Wisconsin governor Jim Doyle have helped promote its rituals and pageantry to such an extent that it has been recommended to become a formally-recognized national holiday.
HumanLight
HumanLight is a humanist holiday also celebrated on the 23rd of December. The New Jersey Humanist Network founded the day in 2001 to commemorate the holiday season without encroaching upon other religious and secular events occuring during the same timeframe. Its goal is to promote “positive, secular human values of reason, compassion, humanity and hope” Aside from the injunction not to use the event to criticise religion, celebrations can be as individual as its sponsors choose to make them.
Summation
More such secular celebrations of the December holidays exist. In fact, Midwinter Day destroys the confines of time and space by celebrating the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration during the continent’s southern winter solstice in July. But going to such extremes isn’t necessary. The examples above show that the spirit of winter solstice celebrations is not confined to religious spectacles alone. Atheists and agnostics need not feel isolated and depressed. They, too, can celebrate the holiday season in a way appropriate to their belief systems. And isn’t the human spirit that motivates all these festivals, secular and spiritual alike, the value most worth celebrating and sharing?
If you care to add to this list or feel differently about such events, tell us by clicking on the Leave a Comment link above to leave your reply.
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