As an atheist, I often get asked what I think of Christmas. What do I think of this shamefully consumeristic celebration for the birth of a non existent ‘son of god’? How can I possibly celebrate Christmas without being a damn dirty hypocrite? And I answer thus.

How reader, much of Christmas is Christian?

Well Cian, it is a time of love, the giving of gifts and the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, our savior sent to clean up the mess his daddy started by throwing us out of that garden.

WRONG, deluded reader! Christmas has next to nothing to do with Christianity. Let’s outline why.

Firstly, the date. 25th of December. Why do you think it is that date?

Because Jesus was born on that date?

Bullshit, kind reader! Think over the story presented to us in the Bible. Shepherds watching their flock at night, traveling for a census and such. Shepherds don’t watch over their flock at night in the dead of winter. They would not live through the night. Or at least catch a nasty cold. And anyways, traditionally, shepherds watched over their flock during Spring and Autumn. And no self respecting ruler would call a census for which thousands of people would have to travel for days during the coldest time of year. That’s just silly. As for the birth itself? Totally didn’t happen then, if it happened at all (but don’t take it from me! Read this article by a group of religious people who have looked far too deeply into this.) And the Stable and animals are not even mentioned in the biblical accounts. Only the manger is.

Ok… So maybe the birth didn’t happen on Christmas. But how about all this giving gifts to celebrate him? How about the tree to symbolize his birth, and the ever-present love of god?

Well, kind reader, let me continue.

It is fairly well known at this point that many of the Christian holidays are actually just Pagan holidays in disguise (Seriously. Rabbits? Chocolate eggs? Encouraging sex between unmarried couples?). When early Christians first tried to convert other people and remove their celebration of other gods, they pretty much failed. Hard. So they decided to keep the Pagan festivities, just change the story slightly. After all, December 25th was the data Pagans believed the sun (son?) was reborn, due to it’s being the Winter Solstice, the day with the least hours of sunshine. So that’s why the day was chosen.

As for the tree, decorated trees were around LONG before Christianity decided to claim them for their own. The Pagans again, you see. They believed that ever-green trees (like your average Chrimbo Tree) had a little faerie in them, which is why they stayed green, even in the deepest darkest winter, when other trees would loose their leaves. So while they didn’t take them inside, they decorated them with little shiny pieces of metal, and brought any fallen branches inside and decorated their houses with them.

So Christmas isn’t Christian. It has simply been hijacked by the Christian Church. It wasn’t even celebrated as a Christian holiday until Pope Julius I decided to announce it as Christ’s birthday in the year 350.

In the end, I do take the two weeks off for Christmas, I stuff my mouth and I love giving presents. I think of it like this. If only Christians can have Christmas, then only Vikings can have Thursday. And that’s just silly, right?

Tags: christmas, religion, Science

So I was lucky enough to get a ticket to Ze Frank and Jonah Peretti’s talk at the Science Gallery entitled GO VIRAL from the wonderious Darragh Doyle, one of the friendliest people in the Irish Blog space. And trust me. They are a friendly bunch, all in all.

So, I head into the Science Gallery to meet Alan Costello and Darragh, and get stopped by an official looking man in a white suit with what seems to be a metal detector. He asks me to please stand up against the wall, and starts scanning me, beeping every now and again. He then shines a bright light into my eyes, and begrudgingly says “Please walk this way, sir”. I head into this clean-roomesque tunnel, to be handed a face mask, a little baggie containing the programme of events and a little microchip which the white-suited person behind the table claims will begin to flash if I contract an infection spreading around the exhibit center. if I get this infection, I must move immediately to the disinfection area on the second floor. I am also instructed to avoid any people with flashing tags. Next to the disinfection area there was a map showing all the various connected tags. Quite interesting stuff.

So it was a weird day. What can I say?

Anyway, soon after all this, we started filing into the auditorium to see the big show.

It started off with Jonah Peretti giving a talk on his website, Buzzfeed along with his various forays into viral media, including accidentally becoming the spokesman for an anti racism movement along with an anti sweatshop movement. One of the highlights of his talk was a simple demonstration of viral activism in the real world. Mormonism. The idea behind this being that since every single Mormon must spend two years of his/her life converting others, the religion spreads like wildfire.

Many other interesting topics were brought up by Johna, such as Big Seed advertising, his foray into viral marketing with the Huffington Post and his various theories on advertising, such as the one of Mullet Advertising. (Business at the front, party in the back!)

Once Jonah was done, Ze Frank, self professed fame whore, came on-stage and started speaking on the 8 moments which made him realize much an emotional effect he could have on people over the internet. I’m not going to go through all the moments here, but check out his site for more. You might loose a few days in there.

Oh, also, I bought some Chlamydia.

Tags: Alan Costello, Jonah Peretti, marketing, Science, Social Media, Viral, Ze Frank