My three-year-old son Emile came home from daycare a few weeks ago singing, "Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel / I made it out of clay." My first reaction was, "Oh great, Chanukah is early this year!" (What? The date changes, like, every time.) My second was, "Oh God -- when's he gonna start asking about God?"
Earlier, he'd come home saying "hallelujah," a simple word he picked up from another pre-schooler, but one requiring a rather complex explanation -- and that's but the tip of the religious iceberg, especially this time of year.
We're a proud Chrismukkah family, but neither myself nor my lapsed-Catholic wife are religious. We love the culture and traditions that our families bestowed upon us, many of which are, yes, tied to religion. But unlike our toddler, we're both rationalists who believe in science, not magic or miracles.
Since Halloween passed, Emile has been fixated on the upcoming Judeo-Christian celebrations. I've kept our holiday-book reading relatively secular thanks to the Grinch, 12 Days of Christmas, and Let's Nosh. But we've been also playing a lot of carols, which invariably include references to God, Jesus, and angels we have heard on high. He hasn't asked about those guys yet, remaining quite firmly focused on Santa, but at some point he will. (I'm actually surprised he hasn't inquired about our Portuguese neighbour's lit-up Virgin Mary, Baby Jesus, and anachronistically adult Jesus.)
It's a particularly contemporary parenting issue. Back in the day, you were raised by whatever religion your parents were. My folks were hippies, but they were Jewish hippies -- so, even though we didn't go to temple often, we had Sabbath dinners on Fridays, I had a bar mitzvah (my sister opted out of her bat), and we celebrated most of the holidays. But we did Christmas, too, because we were basically the only Jews in our B.C. town and it would've been unfair to not have a tree and stockings and chimney visit from the fat man.
My wife actually attended Catholic school, and did all the holidays, of course, but neither of our upbringings provided us with faith in an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good deity.
And, as I get older, the whole concept of belief in any god, much less one true God, seems ever more peculiar to me. Before you dismiss me as a heartless heretic, please know I've done the legwork on this subject. I've taken religious-studies courses in university, spent Easter in Vatican City, saw the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala, bathed in the Ganges with tens of millions during the Maha Kumbh Mela, visited Tunisia during Ramadan, travelled to ancient and modern holy sites in Egypt, and met Buddhist monks in Laos and Tibet.
I once spent a month criss-crossing Israel, staying in a nunnery in Galilee, picnicking at Armageddon (known locally as Tel Megiddo), and sleeping on a rooftop in Jerusalem's Arab Quarter right on the Via Dolorosa, minutes from the Western Wall, Al-Aqsa Mosque, and Church of the Holy Sepulcher. I even visited the Tomb of Saint Nicholas (yes, that St. Nick) in Bari, Italy.
I also recently had the good fortune to discuss religious fundamentalism with with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who assured me "it is not the faith that is the problem, it is the faithful." An interesting argument, but not one that gets me past the literalism that drives both, a literalism predicated on the existence of a supernatural being.
Two-thirds of Canadians profess a belief in God, albeit that number dwindles the younger the respondent. It's hard to know how many take The Word at its word but, as a National Post writer argued, in response to a Globe column questioning the influence of Stephen Harper's evangelical beliefs on his anti-science public policy, religion demands that you do.
"The belief in the real presence of Christ in the communion wafer is the absolute height of Catholic worship," Charles Lewis wrote. "It is not an option, nor is it an option to believe in the resurrection, the ascension into Heaven and the final judgment."
That's what makes me wary of how to address the subject of religion with my extremely literal toddler. (Emile loves dinosaurs, so you'd think at least Creationism would be off the table, but a 2007 poll found 42 per cent of Canadians believe dinosaurs and humans co-existed.) And I do intend to introduce Emile to the bible -- I actually still have my Children's Old Testament from when I was a kid -- as it is a great and influential book with historical and cultural import. But I would never teach it as anything but Aesop-like allegory.
Perhaps the blurred line between religious, cultural, and ethnic Judaism allows me to thread this needle easier than some. We'll be lighting the menorah candles and decorating our Christmas tree this weekend because we deeply enjoy the cultural continuum of religion-based holidays, regardless of my personal belief that Jehovah is no more or less real than Zeus and the stories of his prophets/offspring are not much more or less non-fictional than, say, Robin Hood, no matter how righteous their teachings.
I could just pretend. After all, I'm already pretending that Santa Claus is real. Like Jesus and Moses, Santa is based on an actual historical figure and, personally, I find rising from the dead or parting the Red Sea about as believable as delivering millions of presents down millions of chimneys in a single night. (Though I do believe St. Nick was nice to kids, Jesus was a revolutionary, and Moses likely led Hebrew slaves out of Egypt, if in less epic fashion.)
Last December, I published an interview with Justin Bieber that went viral because he admitted, "My mom always told me there wasn't a Santa. This was her logic: She thought if I grew up knowing about Santa then finding out he wasn't real, that it would be like she was lying to me. And then when she told me about God, I maybe wouldn't believe her."
I'm of the opposite position, but Biebs makes me realize how similar Santa and God are -- if you believe in them, then they encourage you to be a good person. But childhood belief requires parental participation. I'm fine with the great Santa deception because it's temporary and is about delight without the threat of damnation -- a lump of coal hardly compares to hellfire. But it's my job as a parent to teach Emile morality, regardless of supernatural opinions on the matter.
Oh, and if he does becomes interested God on his own, we're certainly not going to discourage him (same goes for hockey) because something we do believe in is free will.
WARNING: Your ears may hate you, but these are 10 of the most annoying holiday tunes out there:
A version of this blog was originally published by The Grid.
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Ken Atchity: Merry Christmas From the Vatican
The Vatican cherrypicks what science it wants to support. Being incurably dogmatic, it will never have a properly scientific attitude.
There is no proof that evolution is a sure thing. There are many unanswered questions to evolution and I myself have my doubts. If we came from monkeys why are monkeys not evolving still? Things evolve to adapt to environments so therefore monkeys would still be evolving to adapt to the environment. But monkeys aren't evolving and there are no monkeys that are at the mid point of evolution. Why would they stop evolving?? No one can answer these questions. Why aren't we evolving?
So I wouldn't say they cherry pick science but they aren't going to go against their beliefs for something that is not proven.
My suggestion is typically this: If you like Christmas - if it conjures up memories of warm childhood traditions that you want to share with your own children - then celebrate it without apology. No excuses needed; no need to try and lump in explanations about Pagans, Jews, or other non-Christians thankyouverymuch. Yes, yes - we all know there are multiple Pagan symbols in modern day Christmas, but unless YOU are Pagan, they have no bearing on why YOU celebrate Christmas.
And for what it's worth, Chanukah is the celebration of the earliest recorded struggle for religious freedom, and has more in common with American Independence Day than it does with Christmas or Solstice. The eight nights of lights were added to this story of violent overthrow relatively recently. Many historians believe that the wintertime 8-day holiday was actually a delayed celebration of the fall holiday of Sukkot, which is also eight days. The thought is that when the war was over, Jews started celebrating all the holidays they'd missed. The "legend of the oil" (which is just that – a legend) was added later to the telling of this story.
Seems hypocritical to me.
*spank* -- a partridge in a pear tree
*spank* -- two turtle doves
*spank* -- three french hens
Wonder of wonders, they ended up critical thinkers.
We hated to lie our the kids about Santa and the story of Christmas etc... but felt like we had no other choice. Sanity prevailed as our kids figured it out by them selves with help from being educated at public universities.
For non-religious folks with Christian ancestry the answer is simple: dispense with the holiday all together and make up rituals to spoil your children the rest of the year. Then your kids would view Christmas no differently than do the kids whose religions don't celebrate it. The reason people don't actually do this is that a.) it would take effort, and b.) the pull to celebrate Christmas is too great for those who grew up with it. This second reason is understandable, but to say you had no choice is terribly disingenuous.
I also never understood "Our children will decide about spirituality when they're older." None of us make decisions for our children about ANYTHING into adulthood, but we all hope they will ultimately share our values. Very few kids raised w/out religious affiliation choose one later, and plenty of kids raised WITH religious affiliation don't maintain it into adulthood. (See the recent Pew Foundation research on this.) So to behave as if religious exploration is something you desire for your children later on, and a spiritual belief is even remotely likely ... again; terribly disingenuous.
To know on religions: M.Eliade is a good introduction - a perfect theologian sees there some mistakes.
Commentaries @Dictionaries on Bible are in every library. Who is responsible for illiterateness of society? You chase people who try change it; Catholic Boards, Universities, Bishops hiring even ...Police! I keep records of it!
Therefore, the Day of Judgment is nearing. I can teach kids but not you, the author@all State,Church clique. Ex. "real presence"- how many of you knows the difference in New Testament between Greek "sarx"(lfesh)@"soma" (body) in description of institution of Eucharist by "Jesus"?
Bible, Aristotle, St.Thomas Aquinas,.....-all is even on websites of internet! You (who chase me) have an exuse for own ignorance @....your children?
So in Judaism there is no hell and heaven?
Also, the whole "communion" thing. There is a split among Christians now as there was in the early days of Christian customs. Many Pagans were not about to consider a religion that proposed cannibalism as part of its rituals.
But those are all adult musings. My parents professed to be Christians but were not churchy. They didn't make me and my sisters go to church, left it to us to work out our beliefs, never made a big deal out of it. They really didn't care what we chose although I suspect they would have intervened if we got interested in a cult. And I do remember my mother being dismayed that Catholic women were forced to bear too many children and one instance where a neighbor who didn't believe in doctors let his wife die from an ear infection but called a vet when one of his cows got sick. This was in Colorado in the 50's.