I'm not particularly religious. I thoroughly resented thirteen years of being forced to attend Chapel services twice a week at Church of England school's and, up until a couple of years ago, the mere thought of voluntarily attending a religious ceremony of any kind made me feel faintly sick with boredom. However this festive season I've been going to carol services. For fun. And donating money to the Church in collections.
Now some of my more militantly atheist friends have found this deeply outrageous demanding how I can be so hypocritical or, in one slightly more extreme case, how I can support what is transparently a system of lies designed to control the masses with fear and concentrate power in the hands of the religious elite.
Well I have a few reasons:
1) I dunno about everyone else's but my local Church isn't an evil force full of corrupt priests seeking to control the congregation, it's rather nice. Aside for Church services they run a whole range of prayer groups, old folk befriending services, soup kitchens and charity ventures. True, not all Church-goers are the saintly types they'd like to pretend but there's a great big core of essentially good folk who combine their beliefs with helping people, and at Christmas I like to show my support for such good will, especially since there's rather too many people out there willing to mock them for their beliefs.
2) Jesus taught nice stuff! Of all the religions I've looked into the teachings of Jesus appeal to me most. Love thy neighbour? Do unto others as you would have others do unto you? Forgiving sins? One of his closest followers was a former prostitute! I'm not convinced that he was the son of God but for a man living a couple of thousand years ago in the Nazareth you've got to admit he was pretty forward thinking. In this time of trouble and strife I think it's nice to hear a bit about good will and peace.
3) And finally I get presents on Christmas day primarily because a nice fella called Jesus Christ died over 2000 years ago. I might not be a Christian myself but thanks to Christians once a year I get to eat hefty amounts of food, exchange gifts with my friends and see the family all together in a cheerful festive mood (a rare occurance). So what if it's just an appropriation of a pagan winter solstice festival into the Christian calender? I love Christmas and I see no problem with singing some cracking carols and donating a bit of money to the nice folk down at my local Church to thank them for it.
So that's why I like going to church at Christmas, and in this day and age where congregations are down and everyone's complaining about a lack of local community, if your a bit curious, why don't you go too?
...Though if you're utterly appalled by the idea and would rather sit in your nice warm house drinking hot chocolate and looking up funny things on the t'internet you can always check this out http://www.smosh.com/smosh-pit/photos/20-most-awkward-santas
Now I'm off to get ready for midnight mass, Merry Christmas everyone!!
H.B.
x
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