NJHN Web Talk

Yes Virginia, Humanists Celebrate the Holidays Too!

December 18, 2006
For Immediate Release
Contact: Fred Edwords, (202) 238-9088
fedwords at americanhumanist.org - www.americanhumanist.org

(Washington, D.C., December 18, 2006) Something positive lies just below the surface of the current culture-war fray surrounding the holiday season.

Of course, certain holiday displays on government land are still mired in church-state separation controversy. Some businesses still wrestle with the question of whether to wish customers "Happy Holidays" or a "Merry Christmas." And some religious groups strive each year to "put Christ back into Christmas." But as all this goes on, a growing number of humanists set aside December 23rd as "HumanLight," a time for quiet celebration and friendly conviviality.

Humanists have no belief in a god. But they know that human beings all over the world, from pre-Christian times to the present, have celebrated the arrival of winter as a special time of year. Because of this, the winter holidays are, to humanists and to others, an observance that is truly human--something that fills a human need for celebration and togetherness in everyone.

To give their own unique flavor to the holidays, humanists developed something for themselves. Commencing with the beginning of the new millennium, they developed HumanLight. And today that celebration has spread from coast to coast in the United States and overseas.

"Humanist families have a desire to enjoy the holiday season in many of the same ways that other people do," said AHA Executive Director Roy Speckhardt, father of two. "Yuletide celebrations became secularized in the United States in the early nineteenth century. So humanists and other nontheists have been participating in their own ways for a long, long time. Now humanists have a special way of celebrating the season."

Evidence of a secular winter celebration abounds. American author Washington Irving popularized a secularized celebration in his "Old Christmas," a part of his "Sketch Book" published in 1820. "Old Christmas" praises the holiday without ever mentioning Jesus or naming Christianity. (The work is available online at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1850/1850-h/1850-h.htm.) Charles Dickens later credited Irving as an inspiration for his own secularized story, "A Christmas Carol" (1843).

"My family and I have practiced holiday gift giving in a humanist spirit since my first child was born in 1984," said Fred Edwords, director of communications for the American Humanist Association. "Now that my daughters are adults, they still enjoy the holidays in this way."

Joe Fox inaugurated HumanLight as a specific humanist observance in 2001 and has established a HumanLight website at http://www.humanlight.org/. He and his family, along with other families, are available for interview. You may contact Joe Fox at the following address to interview him and get contacts for other families:

HumanLight
PO Box 8212
Somerville, NJ 08876

Joe Fox
Furlong, Pennsylvania
215-794-3860 (home)
201-280-1451 (cell)
joefox2 at comcast.net

Millions of nontheistic people--whether they call themselves humanists, freethinkers, atheists, agnostics, or brights--recognize and observe this season in ways that are both unique and inclusive. HumanLight brings them all together.

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The American Humanist Association (www.americanhumanist.org) is the oldest and largest Humanist organization in the nation. The AHA is dedicated to ensuring a voice for those with a positive outlook, based on reason and experience, which embraces all of humanity.