Atheists Have Plenty of Holidays

Morons sometimes use the discredited, nonsense line that they ripped off from someone who mistakenly thought he was clever that, “I can't be an atheist because they have no holidays”, when, in reality, most so-called “holidays” are secular. Think about it. New Years, Martin Luther King Day (yes he was a religious man, but no we don't go to church on that day). Ground hog day, valentines day (yes, saint valentine was christian, but no you don't need to be christian to celebrate it and other cultures had their own similar days) arbor day, flag day, Columbus day, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, Independence Day, Spring Break, Mother's Day, Father's Day. Even Halloween and Thanksgiving are celebrated in completely secular ways by people of many faiths or no faith at all. The same is true of Christmas, or Boxing Day the next day. You don't have to be Christian to give gifts. If you want to, you can celebrate solstice, yule, festivus, or any number of other alternate events, but why bother. There is nothing uniquely Christian about reindeer, elves, pine trees, stocking or any of that. Even Santa himself might have been based on “Saint Nicholas”, but is an entirely different, secular, modern invention. That is just the reality. You might be thinking that the word “holiday” means “holy day”, but you would be wrong. It doesn't mean that anymore either. The majority of holidays are not “holy”, nor does it have to be a religious event to be called a holiday. Words change in their usage and you can't assume that the definition of a word is 100% derived from its components or etymology. As it turns out then, there is pretty much no “holiday” that atheists cannot celebrate. If only Christians can celebrate Christmas because it is a Christian holiday, then, by your logic Christians should not be able to celebrate explicitly secular or non-religious holidays like The Fourth of July, or Columbus Day, or Flag Day. The majority of our holidays are not even religious in origin, but none of them have obligatory religious components. Oh and, before you make another mealymouthed, worn-out joke, no April Fool's Day is not(1) a holiday and (2) for atheists -- it is for you gullible religious people. It was originally created because some of you die-hard religious types refused to change over from the old calendar when the Pope decided to update things, so those following the new calendar decided to mock and play tricks on people following the old ways, which were often the hyper-conservative, religious types. These days, you can bet that the religious people are the ones being fooled and mocked, due to their apotheosis of gullibility, and the atheists are the one's playing the jokes and having all the laughs at the expense of the “faithful” or more accurately “faith fools”. That is, after all, what faith turns people into and some church fathers even had the good sense to admit it.