When I tell people that I was raised with no religion, it’s usually met with a certain amount of skepticism. I never realized what an anomaly it was until I moved away for college, and childhood stories, stories from home, were a matter of course in the ‘getting to know you’ conversations, and bitching about abandoned family religion was a hot topic.

“Never? You’ve really never been to church? What about Christmas? Easter? Seriously?”

Nope, never means never. At the age of 18, I had never sat in a pew and attended a church service. We weren’t high Holy Day Jews, or Easter-only Catholics, or even Unitarians in it for the social aspect (as my Dad was raised, until he was given the option to stop going around age 12). American demographics being what they are, my exposure to religion was haphazard, but fairly broad. I had friends of many religions, though I was too young to really understand what that meant, beyond a weekly time commitment. More importantly, I knew no one for whom it was a problem that I didn’t believe, just as I didn’t care if they did.

Even with this lack of Christianity, Christmas was (and is) a big deal in my home. A tree with an angel and packages and cookies and friends and family, the whole nine yards, the family tradition. Looking back, it’s odd that we had tiny creche figures that we got to remove one at a time from our daily advent calendar, complete with baby Jesus, but it was part of the package. We believed in the story, but that was as far as it went. I knew that Jesus was a good guy, a leader of men, but…he can’t be the son of God if you don’t believe in God. Read More »