Posted by on December 20, 2019 6:51 am
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Categories: µ Newsjones

Our urge to mark midwinter and celebrate the days growing longer precedes Christianity by thousands of years

I love Christmas. At this very special time of year, when the sun appears only fleetingly to those of us living in the northern hemisphere, I feel a deep connection with ancient ancestors. I like to go for wintry walks, on crisp days in pale winter sunshine, finding a Neolithic monument or an iron age hillfort to explore with my children. It also feels right to hunker down, to be with friends and family, to celebrate friendship with the exchange of gifts, and to give to good causes. I love creating cosiness at home – a bit of Danish hygge – with candles and firelight, holly and pine cones. It’s all “good for the soul”.

Occasionally, friends who know I’m a humanist – that I don’t believe in any sort of gods, or indeed an immortal soul – have questioned why I would celebrate Christmas. But while Christians may choose to commemorate the birth of Jesus on 25 December, I don’t see any reason why others shouldn’t enjoy a midwinter ritual whose roots go back much further than the origins of Christianity.

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