In Search of "My Holiday Season"

October, November and December... Ah, the atheist season of challenge!  Lets see; Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Islamic Ahura, Kwanzaa, Christmas...  How does an atheist honor friend's and family traditions without compromising our own values?  I struggle with this one every year.  I can't count the number of times that I, as a closeted atheist, was asked to say Grace at the official Thanksgiving day meal.  Eeeehk!  I always dreaded being "selected" and that horrible moment when all those faithful, grateful eyes turned to me expecting a soliloquey starting with something like "Lord, we humbly ask you to bless...", well you get the point.  I can't remember a single time when I had the guts to decline on the grounds of being a conscientious objector.  And, if it weren't bad enough that by saying Grace I had somehow failed my sensibilities, I wondered (rather hypocritically) whether I had somehow sullied my friend's piousness by saying a less than pious grace.  Oh Dear!  

So, I enter the holiday season with the warm memories of holidays past, but slowly weary of it when I consider that the secularization of these special occasions is, at least in part, enhanced by a desire (on many levels) to include secularists like me.  For how else can believers include their non-believer friends in their celebrations?  Its a quandry that leaves me pale.  I hold dear in my heart the sights and sounds of my believer friends enjoying their celebrations which of course have special meaning to them.  To me, their joy is THE JOY of the season.  I'd hate to remove myself from the mix, but I wonder... do the believers ever wonder what its like for people like me?  I somehow doubt it much crosses their minds.  I mostly hear utterances about how terrible it is that religious holidays are secularized and that this is most commonly attributed to commercialism.  Perhaps true, but I secretly feel somewhat relieved.  Now don't get me wrong, I despise the commercialization of religious holidays, but I am not down on the idea of Kris Kringle.  He (that would be Kris) gives me a place to stand when the world around me is awash in swirling showers of giant, fluffy snow and swaying to the strains of "Oh Little Town of Bethlehem", bright copper kettles, and warm woolen mittens...  Uhm... Sorry... different Blog....

I'd look to Thanksgiving for a smidgen of secularism, but all those hats remind me of the puritan ideals that permeate the celebrations, so no-can-do.  Halloween?  Who would we be kidding if we thought that was a secular holiday?  Ahura?  Nope.  Hanukkah?  Unh-uh.  But.... there is Kwanzaa.  Now there is definately more hope for that one...  Although Kwanzaa, as originally envisioned was offerred up as an alternative holiday for African-Americans to celebrate their cultural uniqueness, I strongly appreciate the principles upon which it is based.  According to Wikipedia: 

"Kwanzaa celebrates what its founder called the seven principles of Kwanzaa, or Nguzo Saba (originally Nguzu Saba—the seven principles of blackness), which Karenga said "is a communitarian African philosophy," consisting of what Karenga called "the best of African thought and practice in constant exchange with the world." 

These seven principles comprise Kawaida, a Swahili term for tradition and reason. Each of the seven days of Kwanzaa is dedicated to one of the following principles:

Umoja (Unity): To strive for and to maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race.

Kujichagulia (Self-Determination): To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves.

Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility): To build and maintain our community together and make our brothers' and sisters' problems our problems, and to solve them together.

Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics): To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit from them together.

Nia (Purpose): To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.

Kuumba (Creativity): To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.

Imani (Faith): To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders, and the righteousness and victory of our struggle."

Now, I don't happen to be African-American, but who would decline from getting behind those values?  So this year, perhaps as I participate in faith-based celebrations, I can recite to myself these seven wise principles and revel in the joy I feel in being with loved ones, old and new.