St. Augustine's Confessions

Ok. I lied. My title tricked some of you into reading this. I am not St. Augustine. St. Augustine was born in 354 ACE and died in 430. He was also a philosopher and theologian, and Bishop of Hippo. And more importantly, St. Augustine was a HE and well, I am not, despite those rumors of me having a "set of brass ones". So, again, to clarify, I am not St. Augustine.

This is also not a confession. I know, I know, but I needed to get the attention of the other millions of people who don't read my blog. Granted, I have my very few fans (who I love dearly for making me believe that I do not talk to myself), but in this fast paced world you need a catchy blog title to get these peoples' attention. I mean, look at LolCatz. A bunch of stupid cat pictures with mispelled captions, a URL about eating cheeseburgers and WHAM! instant internet fame. I've got to be hip and keep up with the times here!

In hindsight, I'm thinking that the title "St. Augustine's Confessions" is probably not the hippest title I could have picked. I think this title may attract that one lone history professor who served with Sherman on his march to the sea and who now looks at the "internetz" as some kind of "hocus pocus malarkey", but hey, there's one more reader for me. Plus, do I really want the type of fan base that is attracted to titles like "Chicks with hawt asses doing guys with strap ons!" or "Robert Pattinson from Twilight is the coolest vampire ever!" (See how I cleverly did that? Now if someone does a search for those, my blog will come up in the keywords. And they will click on it, and come to know the wonder that is me, and then I will feel cool when some tween from tittyfuck [did it again see?], Nebraska wants to "friend" me.)

Anyhow, moving on. Now that I've gotten the title mishap off of my chest I would like to introduce myself:

Hi. I'm Alessia. I'm an atheist. My husband is an atheist. Our son doesn't know any better because he is 2 years old so as far as he's concerned it's not something he's interested in at the moment. I'm telling you this because.....dun dun dun....we celebrate Christmas. Yes. We do. Atheists who celebrate Christmas here. Not the Jesus' Birthday Christmas. Not even the Pagan Festival the Christians Stole Christmas. We celebrate the put-up-a-tree-and-decorate-it-with-Star-Wars-and-ornaments-you-made-in-3rd-grade Santa Claus is coming to town Christmas. Yes. Atheists who celebrate Christmas. That's us.

I tell you this because we have to hear shit from both sides of the fence here. On one side we've got Christians telling us that we're not "allowed" to celebrate Christmas because, as Atheists, we did not get an invitation to Jesus' birthday party and thus cannot even remotely celebrate anything on this day. Not even a good BM or anything! No. We have to sit at home in our Atheist heathen depravity and just pore over science books and have intelligent discussions about the universe and quantum physics and whether or not our new neighbor has a boob job or not. But NO CELEBRATING because we are not friends with Jesus. On the other side we've got Atheists telling us that by celebrating Christmas we're "acknowledging the religious aspect of the holiday and therefore submitting to the idea of the existence of god". Yes, stuffy stick-up-your-ass Atheists really talk like that and I'm with you. They either need a good fuck or a swift kick in the face or both depending on how kinky and how "into it" they really are. So I'm here to clear the air and state clearly and plainly to both sides of the debate: Mind Your Own Damn Business.

To the Christians: you don't hold a monopoly on the holidays. You may think you run the joint, but no, you don't. That's just your egomaniacal two-thousand year history talking and I'm still not listening. The church fathers of long ago, after slaughtering millions of Pagans upon order of "God's Love", decided to incorporate ALREADY EXISTING holidays and folklore into their own and trick the remaining people into blindly following. They had a formula, it worked, I'm not going to fault them for it. But before you start bitching about "let's put the Christ back in Christmas", how about "let's do our homework and read up on history" instead.

To the Atheists: get a sense of humor about life. Seriously. You're draining my very essence with your seriousness. Yes, I get it. There is no afterlife, no heaven, no hell, this is our one shot at life, bible fucks are idiots, and science rocks. I'm with you on all of that, but seriously, can we maybe be mirthful a bit? Just because we know we're mere specks in a vast Universe with no real purpose in life doesn't mean we have to think about the void of nothingness every day! So get off my effing back if I want to put a tree in my house with pretty lights. So what if I want to tell my kid about Santa. No one's ever died in the name of Santa. There have been no jihads in which you hear Santa's name being called as a truck full of C-4 slams into a supermarket. Putting an Xmas tree in my house is not going to magically make me lose all rational thought and start parading around the house singing "Jesus loves the little children" while baking cookies. (Ok, I did bake cookies the other day but I was listening to Rammstein while doing so, but you get the idea.)

Do we understand eachother now? I don't have to follow any sort of holiday rules here. I'm free. I'm free from dogma and ritual and scripture and browbeating and fear that "Mr. Cloud Guy" will be angry with me if I don't please him. I'm also free from following a strict "code of conduct" from a group that shouldn't have one to begin with. If I wanted to celebrate Easter by hiding bowls of spaghetti in people's cars who leave them unlocked, I can. That's the beauty of being an Atheist. I can make up any kind of holiday I want. So get off my back, both of you. Or I will have to celebrate "Smite those that piss me off" Day.

So, from all of us, to all of you Merry Atheist Christmas and a Happy Secular New Year.