Alex Horovitz

So, sitting at Julie’s Place Friday morning with the 6am regulars, I wished the gang a Merry Christmas. Out of respect to our oversensitive era and my last name they wished me a Happy Chanukah in return. I thanked them and made some comment about being an ecumenical atheist which prompted Kenny to ask me what I believed in anyway.

An interesting question. My atheism comes from an absence of belief so it is hard to answer this question in the way Kenny means, but this is what I said to him…

My father was born to a prominent German Jewish family. In fact, my great grandfather was the Rabbi at the Frankfurt am Main Synagogue ( pictured here in both happier times and on the morning during Kristallnacht ).

circa 1882

10 November 1938

My mother came from a conservative-to-orthodox Jewish family from Brooklyn. Although at the time of my upbringing she had most recently been a public school teacher in West Oakland, she had much earlier in her career worked for a stint as a speech writer for Carlos Po Romulo of the Philippine Delegation at the United Nations. While in her UN job she made fast friends with a fascinating array of folks with varrying views on religion and the like.

I grew up in an environment that, through the parade of friends from my mother’s connections at the UN, could best be described as exceptionally diversified. In my teenage years, I attended St. Mary’s College High School while simultaneously participating in Reform Judaism’s youth movement ( NFTY )  which only served to enhance my already latitudinarian outlook.

My Lasallian education gave me an appreciation of America that few if any of my Jewish friends could understand or appreciate. My Reform Jewish upbringing gave me a sense of Tikkun Olam and an obligation to do my part in the mission of repairing the world. My mother’s fascination with other’s creeds and faiths led her to expand my world view through the participation in Unitarian Universalists Church services every Christmas Eve that I can remember.

My sense of spirituality is well intact.

Where I part company with those who identify themselves as religious and are seeking to make the world a better place is on the need for a god at the center of these activities. From about the age of seven onward I did not ( although I did not see the value in confessing this to others until after 9|11 ) believe in god as it had been explained to me by the Rabbis and my parents. In high school I found the same problems with the Christian conception of God. In a nut shell, if things cannot exist without a creator ( as it is explained by so many of the faithful ) then who created god. Oh, that’s different the faithful will say, god is a special case. That’s where my sense of if things sound too good to be true, they probably are kicks in and I conclude that the universe we live in does not in fact need a creator so absent any clear evidence, there isn’t one.

An atheist is born. Yet, I love Christmas!

I love the lights and the decorations, the endless replaying of Christmas carols from my rather wonderful iTunes collection. I love the nativity scenes, the Christmas trees, the malls overcrowded with shoppers, and the sound of ringing church bells. Fellow atheists might raise an eyebrow at the fact that I treasure almost everything about Christmas, even some of the religious symbolism. My Christian friends likely sigh at the fact that I feel an affinity towards the message of Christ and also the lovely commercialism of the season.  Oh well, I love it all and I’m not ashamed.

Indeed I like the quiet, relaxed neighborhood atmosphere of families sitting around in their pajamas on Christmas day, children playing with new toys, the smell of freshly fallen snow, and the cold, crisp winter day. Most of all, I love the time when our extended family gets together on the day around a table to enjoy a special, intimate meal. The laughter and chatter that occurs between family members, as we evaluate a year gone by and talk about the year that lies ahead, is the the most important aspect that has always defined Christmas for me.

I kind of approach Christmas in the same way I approach Halloween, another cultural holiday that is important to social cohesion, steeped in long held traditions shared by the community, such as trick-or-treating and dressing up in costumes. Halloween has significance for many families, even though most of us don’t actually believe that real zombies and fictional characters roam the streets on the 31st of October every year ( or a week later in the case of 2011 in Acton, Massachusetts). So too with Christmas: I don’t need to believe in the supernatural roots of the holiday in order to derive any significance from it. Christmas, including the religious aspects of it, is part of the culture in which I grew up, and as a result it is part of my identity as an individual.

For me, Christmas is about community. But most importantly, it is about family and the essential message of peace on earth and good will to mankind.

Dona nobis pacem.