Real men don’t tell women what to do, say or think.

This was prompted by a Facebook message I received:

I work on a tv series called 4thought.tv for Channel 4 and we are making some films at the moment about attitudes towards Christmas as non-Christians. We have lots of other faith perspectives but don’t have an atheist in the mix. I was wondering if you had some time today could I give you a call to get your thoughts on it?

I can only assume Richard Dawkins was on holiday 🙂

It has got me thinking about what Xmas means to me, and I can put it in only a couple of words: Bugger all.

As a kid, the only occasions I went to a church was for a christening or wedding, so I grew up with Xmas meaning lots of presents from my family. I’m guessing I could have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder in my youth, presents were discarded easily when the thrill of them was over.

And here we have what Xmas means to me: family. Xmas Eve was spent at my nan’s with my dozen Aunts and Uncles and numerous cousins, and Xmas Day was our family, me, two older brothers my mum and dad and sometimes my other nan. These days it’s more important to me as we’ve all flown the nest now, with one brother being 200 miles away, Xmas is one of the precious times when we’re all together at the same time.

Today, I’m a cynical bastard. Xmas now consists of watching idiots with trolley loads of crap they can’t afford for their ungrateful little brats to open up and then discard in a few weeks.

Apart from that, Xmas is just another day to me, it has no special significance to me.

When I finally got a call from Channel Four to discuss my views, I was told my view of Xmas was too normal, they were looking for someone who is really hardcore anti-Xmas who doesn’t put up a tree or decorations. After putting up a post of the Fundamentally Flawed group it’s fair to say we don’t know of any atheists who don’t join in celebrating Xmas at some level.

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