Category Archives: Christmas

A list of Atheist Christmas charities

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First of all, though, here are a couple – selected from thousands – of Christian charities that flourish at Christmas:

Angel Tree:
Angel Tree is a ministry of Prison Fellowship, delivering love in the form of Christmas gifts and a message of hope to children of prisoners. Angel Tree Christmas connects the parents in prison with their children through the delivery of Christmas gifts by local church volunteers who purchase and deliver these gifts and the gospel to children.
Operation Christmas Child:
Operation Christmas Child invites you to pack a shoe box with small toys, school supplies, other gifts, and a personal note to introduce a hurting child to God’s love. The small gifts of love and messages of hope through Jesus Christ are delivered to needy children overseas.

Here are a couple of examples of the good works over which atheists have laboured for Christmas:

Atheist Nativity sign:
The [atheist] group wants to place a sign that reads:
“At this season of the Winter Solstice, let reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.”

Atheists Attempt to Ruin Christmas:
For the first time in the history of Christmas at Palisades Park there were 13 individuals that entered the race for the 21 spaces available rather than the usual three. The unusually high demand for spots, especially by atheists, has sparked Santa Monica’s City Hall to implement a random lottery system to determine who would have access to the spots.

That process left the Santa Monica Nativity Committee with only two spaces on which they can put up only three of the usual 14 scenes. The lottery system that was used gave atheists a majority of the available spaces.

Notice any difference?

Richard Dawkins to guest-edit the New Statesman Christmas issue

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The New Statesman inviting Richard Dawkins to edit the Christmas edition of its magazine is as sensible as Switzerland nominating Moammar Khaddafi to sit on the U.N. human rights council.

From here:

We have no reindeer, but four horsemen; no single star of wonder and no astrologers bearing gifts, but a gifted star of astronomy who knows wonder when she sees it; no kings from the east, but the modern equivalent of a king from the west; and wise men – and women – all around the table. Please join us at the feast.

Four horsemen bearing gifts of pitiless indifference, nihilism, God hatred and meaninglessness each wrapped in a disguise of enlightened rationalism.

Merry Christmas.

Nativity scene removed from Montreal Town Hall

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Canada is a country whose culture, laws and traditions have been indelibly shaped by Christianity. It is not a “Christian country” in the sense that everyone who lives in Canada is a Christian, but it is a part of Christendom, a part of an imperfect hodgepodge of political and individual freedoms rooted in the notion that man was created in the image of God and  that 2000 years ago God became Incarnate and was the inspiration for a civilisation.

That is why Canada should celebrate Christmas, why prayers to the Triune God should be said in public meetings, why schools should not shrink from Christian  education and why those who can’t live with that should live somewhere else.

From here:

MONTREAL – A posh Montreal suburb has decided to remove a nativity scene and menorah from town hall rather than acquiesce to demands from a Muslim group to erect Islamic religious symbols.

The decision by the Town of Mount Royal upsets a Christian resident who says the town is abandoning an established tradition under pressure from a tiny religious minority.

Town councillors of several different religions unanimously decided to remove the Christian and Jewish items.

They had been displayed in front of the municipal building for the past 15 years.

“We asked ourselves if we were willing to display (symbols of) the five major religions,” said Mayor Philippe Roy.

“This is not the role of the city, which is a secular public institution.”

The decision comes amid a larger debate about the place of religion in public institutions.

Quebec’s highest court has agreed to hear an appeal of a ruling that barred councillors in Saguenay, Que., from praying before their meetings.

Saguenay Mayor Jean Tremblay has been spearheading a legal, financial and public-relations crusade to support his right to lead the short prayer.

The battle has pitted Tremblay against the province’s human rights tribunal as well as the Quebec Secular Movement.

Carla Mariano, a Christian resident of Mount Royal, tells QMI Agency that her town’s decision to remove the manger is an affront to Canada’s Judeo-Christian heritage.

 

A 1947 Christmas

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When I was a small child in the UK, rationing was still in force. Bread, meat, butter, potatoes were all rationed. In spite of that, at Christmas, we always seemed to have enough to eat and my parents managed to buy presents. My memory of my early childhood Christmases is not one of today’s excesses that don’t seem to particularly satisfy anyone, but of warm, cheerful (well, apart from my aunt Ada) family gatherings. I didn’t know it then, of course, but my parents made the necessary sacrifices to create a merry Christmas.

From the BBC:

[flv:https://www.anglicansamizdat.net/wordpress/videos/Christmas1947.flv 760 440]

Archive footage shows how British people experienced the run up to Christmas in 1947, one of the toughest of the post-War ‘Austerity’ years.

Bread became rationed, joining other staple items like meat, butter and potatoes, and queues in shops were common.

Sterling was also experiencing a currency crisis, resulting from the UK’s post-War debt to America.

Contrast that with Rowan Williams’ Christmas meanderings in which he bemoans the plight of today’s poor – who are actually considerably more wealthy than even the moderately well-off in the late 40s.

‘No government in its right mind wants poverty. One positive thing about aspects of the current spending review is a clear intention to put things in place that will actually reduce poverty and help people out of the traps of dependency.

‘But also we need to beware of the real temptation to take it for granted that if people still suffer, even after reforms undertaken with good intentions, then somehow it is their fault.

‘Life at the grass roots is always going to be less black and white, and it isn’t surprising if a lot of people, already insecure, start feeling even more insecure. At the very least, there’s a job of communication to do.

‘Hard-working and honest people who do their best really do face problems; so do people with disabilities, with mental health issues or limited mobility.
‘There are doubtless some who make the most out of the benefits culture (just as there are some who have made the most out of other kinds of perks available to bankers or MPs).

Dr Williams returned to the theme in his Christmas Day sermon in Canterbury Cathedral, in which he said society would stick together in hard financial times only if people felt the burden was being shared.

‘That confidence isn’t in huge supply, given the crises of trust that have shaken us in the past couple of years and the sense that the most prosperous have yet to shoulder their load.’

It’s hard not to come to the conclusion that what really irks Rowan Williams is the fact that the government is not redistributing wealth more vigorously. Unfortunately at Christmas, just as at any other time, if a person cannot be content with what he has, he won’t be content no matter how many free Xboxes are showered upon him. It’s a shame that rather than point that out, Rowan chose to preach leftist politics instead. He also could have said a few words about the relatively significant Incarnation event.