christmas

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so, i'm an atheist living in a jewish house, yet i love christmas time. do any of you guys love it too? any other atheistmas celebrators out there?



oh p.s. since this is in the movie thread, any favorite christmas movies?

I celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday. Some Christians tell me that since I'm an Atheist, I don't celebrate Christmas, but that argument is fallible. Historically, Christmas was a pagan holiday before the Christians adopted it. In modern society, it has become a mostly consumer-driven ordeal, with the pretense of generosity. You don't have to subscribe to a religion to participate in that.
Most of my extended family are Christians, so I generally keep this opinion to myself.

I generally dislike holiday movies, but I do love A Christmas Story (1983).

Die Hard

I celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday. I don't have to believe in a god in order to appreciate the philosophy of a shared holiday about giving and spending time with family. Plus I have a kid, and that makes this time of year a lot of fun.

Christmas movies we watch each year (some at the insistence of my wife):

Bad Santa
You've Got Mail
Love Actually (Christmas Eve night every year)
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
The Ice Harvest
Scrooged

that is a great christmas movie.


but a horrible christmas movie is batman returns

I for one celebrate it as a Christian. I wonder what would happen if they started using Jesus' real birth date for Christmas; from everything I've read it was sometime in May...

My favorite Christmas movie is The Madagascar Penguins in A Christmas Caper, followed by Merry Madagascar (yes I love that movie, don't be hatin). Elf & the Peanuts Christmas specials are the only other Christmas movies I've seen that I can stand.

I think of it as a great action movie. Just because it supposedly takes place during
Christmas doesn't make it a Christmas movie, but that's open to interpretation.

Oh! Let's not forget The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Now there's a movie that practically inspired it's own subculture.
That belongs on the top of my list.

here is my response: start at 7:17

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzNRvjkciO0

Its a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart.

ruveyn

Yes!! F--- you! It's Die Hard!

(Also, somewhere around here, I have the Star Wars Christmas Special and, yes, it is a great awfulness. And that's an understatement.)

Alright, the Christians are invading your thread. I apologize in advance.

Opinion: If you really think about it, there are so many different aspects of Christmas and different takes on it that you could celebrate it to some degree no matter what your religion (or lack thereof) without being a hypocrite or contradictory in any way. If you see it as a time to spend with your family, a time to give gifts, a time to catch up house cleaning (yeah, like anyone's going to do that), or a time to celebrate the birth of Christ, or if you're a druid or something and actual know why we have the tree thingy... I know that's one of the Pagan bits... well, why not? There's the original holiday, the new superimposed one (which while it borrowed on the Pagan and was placed to supplant, it really is its own holiday by name), and modern Christmas which has almost nothing to do with Christ anymore (we can all have our own opinions of that). What the heck, odds are you have the day off anyway... Enjoy the eggnog.- end opinion.

I do have another opinion, but it's less preachy...

Someone said a movie being set on or around Christmas doesn't make it a Christmas movie. Well, now, you just think of all the standard Christmas films, folks. Oh, sure, there's some solid representatives, undoubted Christmas films... Miracle on 34th Street, The Bishop's Wife, A Christmas Carol, Scrooged, The Nightmare Before Christmas (a surprisingly 2-holiday flick). But It's a Wonderful Life, famous Christmas movie... hardly has any Christmas in it at all, really. A lot of my favorites are like that. And, as Crow T. Robot said, "Hey, what? Like a good action sequence don't belong in Christmas?"

Die Hard wouldn't be my first choice, but yeah, I could accept it as being a Christmas movie... Maybe I shouldn't but I can. Although I like a spooky Christmas movie myself... not horror, just spooky.

My favorite Christmas movies:

1. A Christmas Story

2. The first two Home Alone movies

3. Bad Santa

4. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

5. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the original)

I am sure there are more, but they're not at the tip of my tongue at the moment.