$1.

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Vol. 18
DECEMBER

SOLSTICE SPECIAL:
Christmas Before Christ
Signs and Symbols of the
Solstice Season
Season Evokes Bittersweet
Memories

A Journal

of

1\10. 12
1976

Phyllis Graham, a former

compelling

story

fulfilment
found

Carmelite

Nun tells the

of her long search for spiritual

and happiness - and how she eventually

both

outside

of

established

The Jesus Hoax, only ~12.50,

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is imported
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->~:
~~~

most

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of the Jesus myth

myth

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Present"

for

~oax

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ON THE

CjReeCltJ3s of

rne ll1nJcel{
THE AMERICAN
Vol. XVIII,

ATHEIST

No. 12

December 1976

Editor:
Contributing

MAGAZINE

Madalyn Murray O'Hair

........

Editors:

.Anne Gaylor
Jon Murray
John Sontarck

Cover Artist

':

Jo Kotula

Design and Layout Editor:

Marilyn

Consultant.

Samuel Miller

Books/Advertising

Dolores Riordan

.
Printer

Hauk

:~:

.
','

Daniel Baladez

.-

.~.,

A(6~ist,

The American'~',
,~Magazine. is published
monthly by the Society of Separationists,
Inc.,
4408 Medical Parkway, Austin, TX 78756, a nonprofit,
non-political,
tax, exempt,
educational
organization.
Mailing address: P. O. Box 2117 Austin
Texas
78768. Subscription rates: $12.00 per year; $20.00
for two years. Manuscripts: The editors assume no
responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts. All manuscripts must be typed, double-spaced and accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope.

CONTENTS-THIS

Letters to the Ed itor

16

Editorial

17

Memories

Radio Series

Christmas Before Christ

He was nominated as canon at the cathedral of

Frauenberg in 1501 but instead entered the medical school of Padua. He also took a doctor's degree in canon law at Ferrara, returning to Frauenberg to take up his church duties in 1512. He practiced medicine and laid a scheme for the reform of
the currency before the Diet of Graudenz in 1522.
Meanwhile he became dissatisfied with the Ptolemaic doctrines of astronomy and decided to test
them by observation,
with scanty instrumental
means. He set down his own theory in 1530 in a
manuscript
titled Commentariolus. This was approved by Pope Clement VII and the full exposition of the Copernican theory was then printed in
1543 under the title De Revolutionilus Orbium
Coelestium. The first printed copy reached Frauenberg barely in time to be laid on the writer's death
on the 24th of May, 1543.
'
The Copernican theory elaborated an entirely
new system of astronomy,
by the adoption of
which man's outlook on the universe was fundamentally changed. Although
Copernicus lived and
died in the church his theory that the earth and the
other planets moved around the sun, did more to
destroy
the establishment
of religion than any
other theory with the exception the evolutionary
theory of Darwin.
We honor this great man as one who assisted all
Atheists everywhere toward freedom from theism.

Announcement

8
10
11

American Atheist

Nicolaus Copernicus,
Polish astronomer,
was
born on the 19th of February, 1473. At the age
of 10, when his father died, he was taken over by
his uncle, the Bishop of Emeland. He was placed
at the University of Cracow at age 18 and devoted
himself to mathematical science. At age 23 he went
to Bologna to study comon law-and attend some
astronomical lectures.

ISSUE

News
Atheist Leader Endorses Carter
A Yule Alternative
Thursday Sabbath

Speaking for Women

Season Evokes Bittersweet

COVER

18
21
24

Effective

January

the price of the American

costs of
as well as postage.
1, 1977,

Atheist Magazine will be raised, due to increasing

labor and material,

If you subscribe, renew or send a gift sub before

ber 31st, 1976, the old price will remain effective:
per year, two years for $20.00.
However beginning January
per year, two years for $25.00.

1, 1977

prices

Decem$12.00

are $15.00

Canadian and Foreign will be $20.00 per year. Postage

to Canada and Foreign countries is skyrocketing.

~rt e tt n g~
of tbt

.inter
~ol~tice
~ea~on
December 25th

by the Julian calendar, was the winter

solstice. This day, orginally regarded by the pagans
as the day of the nativity of the sun, the shortest
day of the year-when
the light began its
conquering battle against darkness-was celebrated
,universally in all agesof man.
Taken over by the Christians as the birthday
of their mythological Christ, this ancient holiday,
set by motions of the celestial bodies, survives as'a
day of rejoicing that good will and love will have a
perpetual rebirth in the minds of men-even as the
sun has a symbolic rebirth yearly."
~~

~~~

~-cr'~

/~

2JY~

---------------------------------------------,.F

haustive study of the history

memoratives.

The news presented in these columns which

fills approximately
one-half of the magazine, is
chosen to demonstrate to you, month after month,
that the dead reactionary hand of religion is always
on you. It dictates how much tax you pay, what
food you eat and when, with whom you have sexual relations, how often, where when and of what
kind, if you will have children and how many,
what you read, what plays, cinema and television
you may see, and what you should or should not
believe about life.
Religion is politics and, always,
authoritarian and readtionary politics.

com-

That 1962 Christmas 4-cent stamp, many

thought, had a shaky future. The New York Times
described it as a "mediocre product."
So postal authorities
plugged the stamp on
radio and TV with a musical commerical sung to
the tune of "Jingle Bells."
The postmaster needn't have worried. Sales
reached almost the billion mark. By 1964, annual
sales were to zoom to more than 2 billion stamps, a
level where Christmas commemoratives
have remained ever since.

the most

We editorialize our news to emphasize this

thesis. Unlike any other magazine or newspaper in
the United States, we are honest enough to admit
it.

YULE STAMPS-A

of the colorful

STICKY ISSUE

Though U.S. postage stamps were first issued in 1845, it was 117 years later before a Christmas stamp cautiously found its way to a Post Office window.
On Nov. 1, 1962, Postmaster Gen. J. Edward
Day released a Christmas commemorative
for its
first-day sale in Pittsburgh, Pa. A square, commonlooking stamp, it depicted a wreath and two candies in green and red.
But the day was bold.
At the time, ardent Christian elements in
America opposed what they saw as creeping commercialism intruding into a spiritual, religious holiday.
Other persons--some religious, some notfeared favoritism toward one particular faith if a
Christian Christmas stamp were to be issued.
Had the Post Office Department and those
concerned about church-state relations and stamps
been able to forsee the furore to come, they might
have concluded the whole Christmas stamp issue
was too sticky to handle.
Only since the turn of the decade has the
controversy over rei igious symbol ism and sectarian
connotations in Christmas stamps died down, according to a religion expert who has made an ex-

Until
1965, Christmas stamp theses were
strictly
secular, despite increasing clamor for a
"religious
stamp."
Then, once religious themes
were introduced, the uproar against them went on
for five or six years.
But by 1972, the argument
was over.
"Something
unique in the American way of life
had happened, a phenomenon reflected graphically
in the story of Christmas stamps."

rowed
minds

The gap between secular and sacred had nar"both

semantically
and literally"
in the
of an increasing number of Americans.

Whether the term 'religious' was being watered down or whether 'secular' was actually being
spiritualized were open questions.
With the success of the 1962 Christmas
wreath stamp under his belt, Day the following
August announced that the second Christmas commemorative
would be issued on Nov. 1, 1963,
at Santa Claus, Ind.
iVlany Christians
were anoyed that the
stamp again was strictly secular, a tricolor
reproduction showing a brilliantly
lit Christmas tree on
the Ellipse behind the White House.
In 1964, polarization was building over whether an explicitly
religious design should be produced.
The new postmaster general, John A. Gronouski, brought out a Christmas stamp known in
philatelic circles as a "se-tenant,"
a series of four
stamps joined together. Traditional
holiday symbols were pictured: holly, mistletoe, a poinsettia
and a pine cone.
But then Wisconsin

Congressman

December 1976/American Atheist - 5

Melvin

R.

haustive

study of the history

of the colorful

com-

memoratives.

The news presented in these columns which

fills approximately one-half of the magazine, is
chosen to demonstrate to you, month after month,
that the dead reactionary hand of religion is always
on you. It dictates how much tax you pay, what
food you eat and when, with whom you have sexual relations, how often, where when and of what
kind, if you will have children and how many,
what you read, what plays, cinema and television
you may see, and what you should or should not
believeabout life.
Religion is politics and, always, the most
authoritarian and readtionary politics.
We editorialize our news to emphasize this
thesis. Unlike any other magazine or newspaper in
the United States, we are honest enough to admit
it.
YULE STAMPS-A

STICKY ISSUE

Though U.S. postage stamps were first issued in 1845, it was 117 years later before a Christmas stamp cautiously found its way to a Post Of-

That 1962 Christmas 4-cent stamp, many

thought, had a shaky future. The New York Times
described it as a "mediocre product."
So postal authorities plugged the stamp on
radio and TV with a musical commerical sung to
the tune of "Jingle Bells."
The postmaster needn't have worried. Sales
reached almost the billion mark. By 1964, annual
sales were to zoom to more than 2 billion stamps, a
level where Christmas commemoratives
have remained ever since.
Until 1965, Christmas stamp theses were
strictly
secular, despite increasing clamor for a
"religious
stamp."
Then, once religious themes
were introduced, the uproar against them went on
for five or six years.
But by 1972, the argument
was over.
"Something
unique in the American way of life
had happened, a phenomenon reflected graphically
in the story of Christmas stamps."

rowed
minds

The gap between secular and sacred had nar"both

semantically
and literally"
in the
of an increasing number of Americans.

fice window.
On Nov. 1, 1962, Postmaster Gen. J. Edward
Day released a Christmas commemorative
for its
first-day sale in Pittsburgh, Pa. A square, commonlooking stamp, it depicted a wreath and two candies in green and red.
But the day was bold.
At the time, ardent Christian elements in
America opposed what they saw as creeping commercialism intruding into a spiritual, religious holiday.
Other persons--some religious, some notfeared favoritism toward one particular faith if a
Christian Christmas stamp were to be issued.
Had the Post Office Department and those
concerned about church-state relations and stamps
been able to forsee the furore to come, they might
have concluded the whole Christmas stamp issue
was too sticky to handle.
Only since the turn of the decade has the
controversy over religious symbolism and sectarian
connotations in Christmas stamps died down, according to a religion expert who has made an ex-

Whether the term 'religious' was being watered down or whether 'secular' was actually being
spiritualized were open questions.
With the success of the 1962 Christmas
wreath stamp under his belt, Day the following
August announced that the second Christmas commemorative
would be issued on Nov. 1, 1963,
at Santa Claus, Ind.
Many
Christians
were anoyed that the
stamp again was strictly secular, a tricolor
reproduction showing a brilliantly
lit Christmas tree on
the Ellipse behind the White House.

ther

In 1964, polarization was building over whean explicitly

religious design should be pro-

duced.
The new postmaster general, John A. Gronouski, brought out a Christmas stamp known in
philatelic circles as a "se-tenant,"
a series of four
stamps joined together. Traditional
holiday symbols were pictured: holly, mistletoe, a poinsettia
and a pine cone.
But then Wisconsin

Congressman

December 1976/ American Atheist - 5

Melvin

R.

Laird was not all impressed. He called the red and

green se-tenant a "commercial ized expression of a
Christmas tree or Santa Claus," and wondered why
the Post Office couldn't be courageous enough to
come' up with a stamp depicting the true meaning
of Christmas?

ians, there should also be a respect for the separation of chu rch and state of wh ich 'Madonna and
Child' was a flagrant violation.
Protests were lodged that year by both the
American Jewish Congress and the American Civil
Liberties Union.

Laird's challenge was a kind of trumpet call.

Letters deluged the department

with reminders that America was by all means a predominantly Christian nation.

But the 5-cent issue already was rolling

through the giant Giori presses at the Washington
Bureau of Engraving and Printing in preparation
for its first-day debut at Christmas, Mich.

And, in 1965, Gronouski announced that

the Christmas stamp would feature the Angel Gabriel blowing his horn.

If religious sensibilities were offended by

that stamp, the next year left the incensed licking
their wounds-if not their stamps.

But more than a few people wanted to test

the mettle of Gabriel's halo-and sex.

Lo, the Post Office issued the very same

stamp in 1967-twice as large.

While history and mythology identified him

as one of the seven archangels in Jewish-Christian
tradition, he was also the amanuensis in Islamic
lore who dictated the Koran to Mohammed, as well
as being the presiding guardian of the moon according to astrological teachings and scholars of
the occult.

The ACLU and the AJC again protested. The

Washington-based Americans United for Separation
of Church and State-a
Christian organizationfiled suit against Postmaster Gen. Lawrence F.
O'Brian.

Those who put Gabriel's anatomy under

magnification were convinced that "he" definitely
had a female torso.
The Post Office Department
dispatches a
postal inspector to Newburyport, Mass., to scrutinize the weathervane on the People's Methodist
Church. For it was the model for a watercolor
painting by Lucille Gloria Chabot of Boston used
by stamp designer Robert Jones.
Gabriel's breast was indeed feminine, the inspector decided,
but that wasn't unusual in
sketches of classical angelic figures.
And though Gronouski
didn't alter the
stamp or its 5-cent imprint, stamp collectors "desexed" Gabriel, assiduously referring to the stamp
only as "angel with trumpet."
Early in July, 1966, postal authorities trumpeted the newest design: a copy of the 15th century Flemish artist Hans Mernlinq's "Madonna and
Child." This was an unmistakably religious painting
-and so was the stamp.

The complaint asked a federal court to stop

the printing of the "Mernl ing issue" and to bar religious symbols from future government stamps.
Judge Alexander Holtzoff handed down a
crucial ruling denying that constitutional protection of the separation of church and state had been
violated.
Christmastime, 1968, was the second advent
of the "Angel Gabriel," now soaring at 6 cents.
But he was not winging through the air with
a trumpet.
He was standing upright, robed and regal,
gallantly reproduced in six colors straight from Jan
van Evck's immortal work, "The Annunciation."
With controversy over religious symbolism in
Christmas stamps reach ing a superheated state,
post office officials decided to cool it in 1969.
Although there was a church in the background, the Christmas commemorative,
"Winter
Scene in Norway, Maine" depicted a quiet snowedin town with a bundled couple and a sleigh in the!
foreground.

That was the problem.

To a wide range of Americans it was too
Christian. Letters to the editors in various newspapers said that wh ile everyone respected Christ-

December 1976/ American Atheist 6

And, with a bundle of favorable mail dow

his slot, Postmaster
Gen. Winton M. Bloun
thought
he had the Christmas stamp proble
Iicked for good.

He was partially right, for the next

a philatelic first, with the birth of the
take" Christmas stamp act. Two stamps
sued in 1970, one religious and the other
gious.

year was
"doublewere isnonreli-

Both were moneymakers,

stamp-watchers
noted, not only for the government, but also for
stamp dealers and manufacturers of stamp-collecting paraphernalia.
Still at 6 cents, Lorenzo Lotto's "The Nativity" was the religious choice. The secular counterpart, "Toys in the Attic,"
designed by Steven 00hanos, showed four 19th century American Ch ristmas toys.
The idea of the two commemoratives
had
caught on by 1971 when the first 8-cent Christmas
stamps were issued.
The Post-Office Department,
now independent and renamed the U.S. Postal Service, issued
a nativity scene by the Venetian artist Giorgione,
whose 1508 "Adoration
of the Sheperds" hangs
in the Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art.
The eight-color stamp was by young Jamie
Wyeth of Chadds Ford, Pa., showing a plump partridge in a pear tree.
By 1972, as far as criticism of Christmas
stamps was concerned, not a creature was stirring.
For those who liked visions conjured by
Santa Claus, the secular stamp of designer Dohanos
from "The Night Before Christmas" showing the
jolly red elf was sure to bring an approving nod if
not a chuckle.
The religious commemorative
depicted Dart
of a 15th century altarpiece by an unknown artist
titled "Master of the St. Lucy Legend, National
Gallery of Art."
The secular commemorative
of 1973 took a
new twist with a six-color portrayal of a whimsical old-fashioned Christmas tree designed in needlepoint by Connecticut artist Dollie Tingle.
The religious 8-center was a Madonna and
child by Raphael from the National Gallery, with
stamp design by dependable Bradbury Thompson.
The Postal Service went on to higher things
in 1974---the cost of Christmas commemoratives
rose to 10 cents.
And

following

up on the philosophy

more is better, postal people made the surprise announcement that there would be three Christmas
stamps-two
commemoratives
and a precanceled
"self-sticker. "
The religious stamp was an angel in flight,
again designed by Thompson and based on a 15th
century
altarpiece. The precancel had the title
"Peace on Earth," and the theme of a dove with an
olive branch in its bill.
The secular stamp was executed by Dohanos
and featured a popular Currier & Ives scene, "The
Road-Winter."
Although
the two 1975 Christmas stamps
went on sale early (Oct. 14), there was a certain
nebulous quality to them.
They are the only U.S. stamps ever to omit
a monetary value, according to Los Angeles stamp
expert Michael Orenstein.
"They didn't know what the price would be
in December when the stamps were printed last
September,"
said a Washington,
D.C., postal official. He added that though the date when postage
rates are to rise is now up in the air, it is presumed
that 1975 Christmas stamps may be used indefinitely for a 1O-cent value.
The
the image
en bell, is
Christmas

1975 secular Christmas stamp, bearing

of a cherub pulling a cord to ring a golddesigner Dohanos's rendering of an early
card originally designed by Louis Prang.

Thompson
again designed the religious
stamp, a Madonna and child from the National
Gallery by 15th century painter Domenico Ghirlandio, a Florentine noted for his detailed narrative
frescoes.
It's too early to tell what the nation's stamp
designer's have on their drawing boards for the
1976 Christmas Bicentennial issue.
But, as Marcus Bach put it, "The Christmas
stamp is now definitely
here to stay, an ever-unfolding commentary
on the American spirit and
the American dream."
Once again the religious community
had
won and this time it only took 14 years. Meanwhile the Atheist community
has done nothing and
the meaning of the Solstice is hidden behind Jesus
Christ.
[source:

Los Angeles Times,

that
~~
~

December

19761 American

Atheist

-7

12/25/75]

The
"true
meaning"
of
December
25th,
which is the Winter Solstice, has never been approached by the United States Post office. The
American Atheist Centre has been fighting with the
United States Post office now for six years demanding a "Solstice"
stamp and the Centre will
continue
its demands until it obtains a Solstice
issue.

ATHEIST

Roman Catholics
our civil liberties.

can do, will

do and do now to

"Ford hands us to religion which promises reo

ward after death for our obedience now while
our earth is raped, unemployment,
inflation, hunger and crime ride rampant.
In none of these
areas has either god or Jerry Ford reached out to
help.

mi
na

Its
w

in

LEADER ENDORSES CARTER

The following
is the full text of a press release
issued from
the American
Atheist
Centre on
October 26th, 1976,
Madalyn Murray O'Hair, American Atheist leader, today endorsed Jimmy Carter for President.
In explaining
her surprising choice she said,
"I n support of ou r Constitution
and as an advocate
of state/church
separation,
being an American
Atheist,
I have no choice but to recommend
Jimmy Carter to the American Atheists who comprise 23% of the population.

"1 earnestly ask all American Atheists to look at

the record of the two men in the area of state/
church separation. As governor of Georgia Carter
tried to separate religion and government. Ford,
however, would sell Jesus Christ, in slices, to cornpete for the religious vote which he sees as a part
of Carter backing.
"I am not unaware that with Carter in the White
House, the evangelicals will gain in stature but that,
too, will help us all since the nation will not be
able to stomach the spectacle for long."

U.W.A.

"1 recognize

that Jimmy Carter, and his wife,

are both fanatically
religious and both think that
they have talked with god. However, god has apparently whispered into their ears that the hallowed concept of state/church
separation is best
for our nation ... and even as an Atheist, I can say,
'thank gawd' for that.
"Jimmy Carter eschews a constitutional
amendment to return prayer into public schools, sees the
need of taxing run-away church businesses in unfair competition
with the taxed businesses and he
would resolve the abortion issue crisis by increased
sex education in respect to birth control.
"Carter
is also more interested
save our physicalearth now.

in ecology

to

"Jerry
Ford, who is a completely
unprincipled political hack, would destroy the foundation
of our most basic rights, the First Amendment to
the Constitution
of the United States by advocating amendment to it-probably
the first of many
which would ultimately
eliminate freedom of the
press and freedom of speech, as well as freedom of
conscience.
"Ford would hand women, as local option issues, to strong politically
controlled
local authorities where religious strength can impose upon
women and citizens the ideology of a particular
brand of Christianity.
No one can doubt what the
Utah Mormons,
the South
Carol ina Baptists,
the Minnesota Lutherans and the Massachusetts
December 1976/American Atheist - 8

UNITED

WORLD ATHEISTS

A multinational
group called United World
Atheists demanded on September 25, 1976, that
the Roman Catholic Church pay a $100 million
"retribution"
to A theists and "stay out ofthe
bedroom."
United World Atheists said in a statement that
its President, Madalyn Murray O'Hair, delivered the
group's demands to the Vatican Secretariat for
Non-Believers, organized by Pope Paul VI to find
a common ground with non-believers.
The fiery Dr. O'Hair of Austin, Texas, won some
notoriety
in church circles in 1963 when she led
the successful Supreme Court battle to ban Bible
reading and prayer in U. S. public schools.
Warning that "the future of the church in an
Atheist-dominated
culture
tomorrow
depends
upon the actions of the church today," the group's
first demand was for "retribution
of $100 million
for the atrocities perpetrated against all Atheists
during your history."
The
Vatican
Secretariat
for
Non-Believers
could not be reached for comment but Vatican
sources termed the group's statement "absurd."
The group in addition
said the Vatican must
"surrender
a symbol of one of its tyrannies (the
Spanish Inquisition):
the crown given to the Papacy by Ferdinand and Isabella" of Spain.

Ie

The group, which said it is a "loose but determined affiliation"

of Atheist organizations in eight
nations, also demanded that in future the Church
"stay out of the bedroom and not concern itself
with the wombs of women."

Now, the tale was that Saint Nicholas

brought three children back to life after they had
been killed by an innkeeper and pickled in salt
brine.

Other demands of the ,group said "must be met

in the immediate future" include:

The legends gave rise to the tradition of giving children presents in his name during December
---especially in Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

-That the Vatican Museum prominently display

"for all to see, the iron maiden, the rack, the pulleys and the instruments of torture by which it
stifled dissent."
-That
the Church publish "its financial
business assets throughout the world."

and

., That the Church "withdraw

from intrusion
into
the schools" and stop "forcing upon the
minds of undeveloped children the psychopathological precepts of Christianity."
-That the Vatican return all "looted art objects,
antiquities,
statuary and "rarities
now illegally
and immorally in its possession."
The group also said it was "seizing" as Atheist
holidays the "four great natural holidays of earth"
-the Vernal Equinox, the Summer Solstice, the
Autumnal
Equinox
and the Winter Solstice.
[source: UPI, 9/12/76]

TWO SCHOLARS EXAMINING

MYTHS ABOUT THE SAINTS
Roughly 16 centuries ago, Bishop Nicholas
of Bari held forth in a little Italian town not far
from Venice.
As legend has it, he was a wealthy and goodhearted man.
He became quite concerned when he learned
of three unfortunate girls who were reconciled to
become prostitutes because they could find no husbands.
The problem was that they were poor and
could offer no dowry. The good bishop gave each
girl a sack of gold and saved them from a life of sin
and misery.
Artists captured the story in paintings. Over
the centuries the legend and artwork aged and the
sacks of gold became three small children in the
story of the good bishop.

The stories mingled with Scandinavian legends and Saint Nicholas eventually became the
Santa Claus of modern folklore, according to two
Rutgers University professors.
Dr. Donald Weinstein and Dr. Rudolph M.
Bell, professors in the history department, intend
to chronicle the lives of some 2,500 saints, using
the help of a computer.
"Saint Nicholas is a perfect example of why
we're studying the saints," said Bell. "There are
enormous numbers of myths about the saints,
and much of what is believed about them is not
factual."
Bell and Weinstein are concentrating on a
700-year period starting with the 10th Century and
including
the
Renaissance and Reformation.
Following some 24 months of research, with
the help of some Latin texts Weinstein obtained
from the Vatican Archives in Rome and other material, the professors have traced the evolution of
saints.
In the 10th Century, saints were selected
from the nobility, the upper ranks of the church or
from the monastic orders, and they all tended to
be male.
Two centuries later, when broader elements
from the city and farm communities became more
active in religious life, saints were selected from
tradesmen, artisans and even peasants.
"It allowed the people to venerate individuals more like themselves and their own station in
life," Bell said.
By the 13th Century, more saints were women and Italians and the care of the sick and poor
were the prime virtues for sainthood.
The 14th and 15th Centuries saw an increased interest in saintly ascetics and hermits,
even though the period was known for its great
cities and the Renaissance.

December 1976/American Atheist - 9

During the stormy Reformation and Counter-Reformation of the 16th and 17th Centuries,
the prevailing religious mood was for saints who
defended the church and performed great missionary works.
The study has turned up that one in four
saints was a woman. The professors are digging to
seehow many there were, if they married and what
they did to become saints.

Such was the case of Mother Elizabeth Ann

Seton, for whom Seton Hall University in. South
Orange, N.J. is named, who recently was venerated
as the first U.S. saint.
[source: Sunday Star-Ledger, 12/28/76]

A YULE ALTERNATIVE:
SEVEN DAYS OF KWANZAA
Kwanzaa is catching on.

In their research, Bell and Weinstein are trying to find the importance of religion in ordinary
peoples' lives, one aspect of which is the role
played by saint cults.
People would pray to a saint for everything
from recovery from illness to release from prison.
The people in their daily religious practices
often had a lot to do with the eventual selection
of saints as a cult developed around a person who
had died some time earlier.
"The church gives official sanction to what
is already going on in the community," Weinstein
said.

The seven-day Afro-American holiday, conceived in 1966 as a non-religious alternative to

Christmas, is expected to draw thousands of people
to celebrations this year.
Kwanzaa, which began yesterday and runs
through Jan. 1, has been growing in popularity in
black communities here since the early '60's, when
it was developed by Los Angeles balck leader Maulana Ron Karenga, founder of the organization US..
"Kwanzaa deals with reality more than myth
or fairy tales," explained Sister Nacosta, member
of the East Family, a black-cultural organization
located in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

"What do you mean it was a G I R L?"

*
J

December 1976/American Atheist - 10

Sister Nacosta said observers of Kwanzaa

preferred it over Christmas because of its non-rei igious context.
"Different
religions may have different feelings about Christmas. Kwanzaa is for all African
people. It's not a religious thing, limited to one
belief."
Kwanzaa also does not involve contless trips
to department stores, Sister Nacosta added.
"We're not dealing with a whole lot of money, shopping for toys and other costly gifts. We
make our own gifts-necklaces,
potholders-things
that aren't of great expense to anyone."
Kwanzaa is thoroughly
an Afro-American
affair. Africans do not celebrate it. It does, however, have its roots in Africa. It's sort of a compendium of African festivals, and in particular the one
that marks the end of the harvest and the beginning of the new planting season.
I n African countries during such festivals,
people traditionally
come together in an expression of thanks to nature, their gods and ancestors,
and to rededicate themselves to the survival of
their community
and way of life.
As it is celebrated here, each of the seven
days embodies one of the principles of Kawaids,
which means "tradition"
in Swahili. The principles
are: 1) unity, 2) self-determination,
3) collective
work and responsibility,
4) co-operative
economics, 5) purpose, 6) creativity,
and 7) faith. On
each night a candle is lit commemorating
one of
the principles.
Other trad itional holly and evergreen decorations in many cases are a straw mat representing
tradition and an ear of corn for each child in a family.
The Studio Museum in Harlem, in celebration, has plans for classes in African dancing, singing and craftsmaking.
[source: New York Post, 12,27,75)

THURSDAY

SABBATH

The following
is the full text of a press release
issued from
the American
Atheist
Centre on
November 11, 1976.
Madalyn Murray O'Hair, chief spokesman for
the American
Atheist
Church
and self-styled
"Madonna Madalyn" of the same ("That's equivalent to being the Pope"), today declared Thursday
to be the Sabbath Day of American
Atheists.

"After
a careful study of the United States
Supreme Court ruling of November 3rd, which declares that business companies must rearrange work
schedules so that they do not inerfere with
workers' religious practices, we American Atheists
feel that we must seek the same protection."
she
said.
Today she was busy contacting Atheists to encourage them not to work on Thursdays and to
demand of their employers that work schedules
be arranged so that-they not be required to profane
their sabbaths with labor.
"With
one out of four Americans being in
Atheist ranks, this should entirely disrupt all of
our industries" she pointed out gleefully.
She also called for all schools to close on Thursdays to accommodate Atheist beliefs. She planned
to campaign for "Thursday
Blue Laws" to close
retail business in those States of the Union which
require closing on Sundays. "One holy day is as
good as another" she declared.
Noting that liquor is never sold or served during
church hours [while booze is being nipped in
church under the euphemism of sacrament"} she
planned to call for similar respect for Thursday
mornings.
Following what she categorized as "a ridiculous
rule" of the U. S. Supreme Court, she pointed out
that all Atheists should demand paid vacations for
the Atheist holidays of Summer and Winter Solstice and Vernal and Autumnal Equinox.
The American Atheist Church which Dr. O'Hair
(excuse the slip-the
Madonna Madalyn) heads is
described by her as "the attack by humor and ridicule" on religion. The American Atheist Church already has a dozen Saints, its own holidays [Solstices and Equinoxes]
several Madonna Encylical
Pronouncements
and currently has for sale a number of Bishoprics and Cardinalates, "just like the
churches-we
sell them too."
Asked why Thursday
was so special, she explained that it was a day wholly (sic) for Atheists
and must be set aside from them. "That is the day
that I led the Children of Atheism out of the Wilderness of Religion--and that was also the day that
I created Heaven on Earth, a half-acre tract down
here in the great state of Texas. Amen."
The Madonna promised more pronouncements
regularly from her Church, which she wryly described as existing on paper and in belly-laughs.
December 1976/ American Atheist 11

We wish to thank the following, listed alphabetically, for

their contribution to our Building Fund:

Dr. L. O. Adamson
Anonymous-Chicago,

$10.00
IL

$597.66

Ca Masten

$100.00

P. B. McQueen

Peter Emmons

$10.00

Sydney and Lillian Osser

Mrs. R. I. Farlow

$10.00

Margaret and Clarence J. Richards

$10.40
$5.00
$10.00

Betty Fulford

$100.00

Paul Robertson

James Grigg

$100.00

Rudolph Rosbanka

$10.00

Dale Gruver

$10.00

John Rush

$25.00

Vernon Hone

$100.00

Mr. and Mrs. Michael Savidge

$4.50

$5.00

Alfred W. Ismond

$10.00

A. Schmitz

Gary Ivins

$10.00

Robert Sims

$19.84

Paul Kay

$10.00

Herbert Solberg

$10.00

Harold C. Kiel

$25.00

Albert Stanelle

$25.00

Douglas Kinney

$27.36

Victor P. Tolbert

$10.00

E. Krumm

$13.13

Arnold L. Via

$50.00

Charles Leto

$15.00

Pat Voswinkle

$50.00

P. C. Macini

$25.00

Paul D. Wilson

$50.00

Ruth Yeager

$10.00

Simon Zhukowsky

$25.00

Ellen Mardan

$100.00

David B. Martin

$20.00

Total

$100.00

$1,708.39

(Received up through November 18, 1976. Contributions

received after this date will be reported in next month's
magazine.)

December 1976/ American Atheist 12

Wntttltb

llatbtttc

~urbtp

Diana Goldenberg
North Michigan Avenue-Chicago's
swank
shoppong street-twinkles
with tiny lights. State
Street=horne of Chicago's large department stores
-is inhabited by mechanical elves and storybook
houses and toy soldiers. The streets of the city are
gorged with shoppers, the hustle and bustle builds
to a steady roar, and yards of wrapping papermiles, perhaps-slip
around innumberable boxes.
Christmas, of course, the major holiday of
the calendar. Seemingly everything takes on a holly
sprig or a star in honor of that day. Supposedly
everyone gets into the "hol iday spirit."
But since Christmas is grounded in religion,
what of those who are not religious? Do they take
on the sprigs and the spirit? What does an Atheist
think-or do=about Christmas?
To find out, I interviewed five Atheists in
the Chicago area approximately a month prior to
the 1971 version of the holiday in question.
Three of the five said they do celebrate
Christmas. What's more, none of the three saw any
confl ict between the fact that they do not bel ieve
in god and connection between god and Christmas.
One of these, a woman teacher in her thirties, married, with two children, said she regards
Christmas as a "secular holiday." She explained
that she can look on it as a "winter hol iday ... a
beautiful thing."

small Christmas party in her classroom.

we'll bake cookies," she mused.

"Maybe

The fact that she is an Atheist "has never

come up," she said. And because of this, she has
never encountered any discrimination because of
her views. However, she did request that her name
not be mentioned in this article because she feared
reprisals against her as a teacher by the parents of
her pupils.
It has been said that "Christmas is for children." How does this woman treat the subject of
December 25th with her own youngsters, a girl, 11,
and a boy, 9? She tells them that all religions were
once pagan, and "now there are Christians and
they're wrong too." Whenever her children come
home with a question about god, she said, "we usually discuss it." The children are Atheists also, she
contended.
This woman became an Atheist because "it
made sense." She thinks most people give "lip service" to religion. After "thinking
it (religion)
through," she decided on Atheism. A factor in her
decision was reading Ayn Rand's novel, At/as
Shrugged. Her husband became an Atheist around
the time she did.
He works for an advertising agency and
sometimes, she mentioned, goes to Christmas parties in his office.

"We've even been known to have a tree," she

said, adding that she did not know if her family
would put one up in 1971.

When asked about attending Christmas parties in private homes, this teacher answered that
they do not attend any because they usually aren't
invited to any.

What about the other trappings of Christmas? The gifts, songs, customs, amusements? Her
family does exchange gifts at Christmastime. And
she says "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays"
when she receives similar greetings.

However, she and her husband do avoid their

respective families at Christmastime, because the
relatives are religious. And perhaps to indicate her
regard for her relatives' views, she added that their
attitudes
were "feel ings" rather than bel iefs.

If given a Christmas gift by a professional associate, this teacher said she didn't know what she
would do about accepting it. After a moment's
pause, possibly giving it more thought, she said she
would probably take the present without questioning her giver's motives. She added that she sometimes receives gifts from the parents of her studdents.

The second Christmas celebrator, a 3D-year

old engineer, also regards it as a "secular holiday."
Historically," he explained, Christmas is "essentially a pagan holiday ... to celebrate the coming of
spring ... (it is) culturally a traditional celebration."

This Christmas,

she considered

arranging a

Since he has days off work at Christmastime,

he does have parties and puts up a tree=but the
ornaments are "not heavily Christianized," he said.
"A tree is one of the trappings that symbolizes

December

1976/ American

Atheist

- 13

winter."
An individual is "not yanked out of the culture" on embracing Atheism, he feels, explaining
that he has celebrated Christmas for thirty years of
his life-not
all of which have been god-believing
years. I n spite of this, he said he doesn't th ink
Christmas is that important.

everybody is a perfect Atheist all day ... only culturally it's taboo to say that one does not believe
in god. Our culture is based on reason and logic,
not faith ... 1 think people pay token to religion because they don't want to be signaled out as wierdos."

However, he did contend that if Atheism

were the dominant trend in America, there would
"still be a holiday to celebrate, a time to exchange
gifts ... Every culture does it ... the Christian influence is immaterial ... 1'rn human too. My rational (for marking it) is different."
Christmas, he continued, is "a warm, human, basic thing. We'd still
have Christmas without Jesus."

This triple-degreed
(engineering, nuclear engineering, business) engineer has encountered some
discrimination
because of his Atheism.
"All
forms," he claimed,
you're odd." In his job,
he believes, "those who have certain beliefs (including religion)
get benefits, those who don't,
don't." And he includes himself among the don't."

On the question of giving gifts, this man responded that gifts are "something
I've always done
and (Christmas is) a time to show appreciation of
those you love ... the time our culture has picked
out to give gifts."

He said his wife shares his beliefs, but "she

doesn't fight the issue (of Atheism and Atheism
and Christmas) with her mother." He described his
wife as "much more passive" in asserting the positions. He added, however, that if she had to write
an essay on her bel iefs, the bel iefs wou Id come out
the same as his.

"Merry
Christmas,"
he feels, is a greeting
that doesn't mean anything. He compared it to saying "How are you?" to an acquaintance. One really
isn't interested in how the acquaintenance
is, he
thinks, but merely is recognizing
the acquainttance's existence. As might be expected, he sees no
religious significance to "Merry Christmas." When
greeted with it, he usually responds "generically"
with "Merry Christmas," feeling it means a wish of
happiness to the other individual.

The third Christmas celebrator doesn't place

much importance on Christmas. He finds holidays
"annoying
because everyone's rushing around .. ,
you're working and it's inconvenient.
Everything
is thrown off. Other things are more important."
Such as? "Every day should be special. .. why pick
out this one day?"

He became an Atheist during adolescence,

when his mother sent him to a catechism class of
his Episcopalian faith. He decided to delve into the
religion and ironically discovered: "I couldn't accept those things (religious doctrines) on faith."
So he became an agnostic. As he grew older, he
realized he was "fence sitting" and that he "needed
answers." This man became an Atheist because he
had no evidence god exists. "You cannot prove a
negative," he asserts, and is annoyed by the definition of an Atheist as one who insists god doesn't
exist.

It

He regards December 25 as a "Iegal holiday," but "sort of" celebrates "because it's so traditional. .. 1 will attend a party or may give gifts
to people I love." He noted that he was not celebrating Christmas for the same reasons others have
for marking the day.
As did the male engineer, this man stressed
the historical idea of Christmas, touching on the
fact of rejoicing about the Winter Solstice.
He might say "Merry Christmas" to someone, but views the expression as "just a form of
benevolence."
,

"It's important
that Atheism is not a negative," he said, adding that Madalyn Murray O'Hair
calls Atheism a positive, believing that reason and
logic are all that are necessary to have a growth of
civilization.
This engineer enthusiastically
supports
O'Hair's views.

At 23, he has a B.S. in psychology. However,

he is "in between" at the moment, working in an
"extremely
conservative bank" and attempting to
save enough money to return to college. Because of
his employer, he too asked that his name not be
used in this article.

"1 believe most people are Atheists or Agnostics ... because they act and Iive as Atheists. Try
to live Christianity:
I'd give you 48 hours. (One)
can't live Christian theology, it's ani-live. I believe

He became an Atheist
because he "just
couldn't
accept the fact that there was a god."
Raised a strict Catholic, he found the rebellion
against faith simple because, he said, Catholicism

December

1976/American

Atheist

- 14

pointed

out

the "absurdity"

of religion

so well.

said, but philosophically

it is religious. He doesn't
celebrate the day because its meaning is vague. One
"should
know why one is celebrating,"
he explained, and added, "There is nothing inherent in
it that I value."

Perhaps the only discrimination

he has encountered because of h is bel iefs occurred in high
school. I n an Engl ish class there, the subject of
Atheism was discussed, and his Atheism was made
known. He feels he got a lower grade than he deserved because the instructor
was anti-Atheist.

In his business, he said, Christmas is the

busiest time of the year. Has he encountered any
problems there because of his Atheism? "No," because the point hasn't come up very much. Further, he believes that as long as he gets the job
done, his co-workers essentially don't care about
his personal philosophy.
"But they may not like
you," he added.

Three views of Atheists

who celebrate
Christmas. But what about the other side, the two
who do not rejoice in or on that day?
The first of these, another female teacher in
her thirties, said she does not regard Christmas as a
holiday at all.

What about the possibility

of a Christmas
from his personal employer? "1 would accept it if
it is a reward for my performance, if they have a
reason for giving it. If it's merely a Christmas gift,
I would say no."

She works in a school for retarded children,

and tells her students that the Santa Claus who
comes to their classroom is just a man dressed in a
costume. However, she doesn't think many of the
children understand Santa Claus at all.

To "Merry
Christmas"
wishes, he usually
responds that he doesn't celebrate Christmas. He
may thank the wisher for the intention, however,
or he may simply remain silent.

Most of her co-workers are aware of her

Atheism. So it may not have surprised them that
she did not plan to give a gift at the school's annual
-and
mandatory-staff
Christmas
party.
She
said she might step into the party for a moment for
a cup of coffee, but that that would probably be
the extent of her participation.

This man became an Atheist in high school,

he said, "because it is the rational position ... 1 saw
how absurd the idea of god is." He was never particularly reliqious, however, so the change was not
difficult.
He made his decision during a period in
his life when he "questioned and developed basic
values."

With "Merry Christmas" wishes so prevalent

at that time of year, how does she respond to the
expression? For a person she holds "in any regard," she explained, she usually answers "don't
bother"
because she is an Atheist. To strangers,
this woman usually just nods in response.

As for discrimination
because of his Atheism, this man explained that when he was the president of his high school student body, the school's
administration
was reluctant to let him speak out
because his views-including
Atheism--were
radical.

Her husband holds essentially the same views

on Christmas as she does. When interviewed, she
said he might be offered a Christmas gift by his
company. But she did not know if he would accept it.

Although he likes holidays, he doesn't think

he's missing anything by not celebrating Christmas.
"There aren't enough rational ones (holidays)."
Does Christmas belong in the American culture? "It
doesn't contradict
it." He thinks it must belong since it has
been such a commercial success.

She claimed to have had little trouble with

her relatives because of her position, but noted
that she and her husband had encountered some
difficulty
with his parents.

On the subject of Atheists who do celebrate Christmas, this man said he thinks they are "probably
hedging
because
they don't
want to feel different. .. they are
probably hedging in the moral issue. If your're an Atheist,
there's no reason to celebrate it (Christmas)."
.

Of course, this couple does not have a

Christmas tree in their home, nor do they exchange
gifts nor go to parties.

"Atheism,"
he explained,
"is so insignificant
I
seldom think about it. Not believing in something
is not
important-it's
what you do believe in that is important."

Neither does the second non-celebrator. This

man, a 22-year old management trainee for a large
Chicago department
store, holds the position that
Christmas is vague and undefined. "It's a holiday
because a lot of people choose to make it so." Publicly, Christmas is treated as a secular holiday, he

The American culture contains religious elements.

Do Atheists
stand out) Sometimes
yes, sometimes
no.
Christmas provides one opportunity
to find out .

.~.

December

19761 American

Atheist

- 1~

*1Lttttr~

to ~t ~bitor

Dear Editor,
I share with Richard S. Richardson his respect
for Robert Green Ingersoll, but I do not share his
enthusiasm for cleaning up a piece of good earth
and the stone that Iies on top of the physical remains of R. G. Ingersoll in some out of the way
place. For one, I don't believe in letting the "dead
lie" in or on any eternally reserved piece of ground
--such pagan/religious customs offend my ecological sense of utilization
of spaceship earth. For
another, I only like to "get off my ass" for meaningful enterprise, regardless of the appeals to
"Mom", "god", "country",
or "apple pie" (well,
maybe for apple pie?).
To honor Ingersoll, the real point in question,
suggest that we understand the additions he has
made to the foundations of free-thinking philosophy and not only carry them forward in deed and
thought, but review them for our socity to understand, correct them when in error, and extend and
add to them.
--Dennis Ray Thompson,
Baltimore, MD
Dear Editor,
This letter is in response to the editorial that
appeared in the September 1976 issue of the American Atheist Magazine. Our views do not coincide
with the author's feeling of disgust at the condition of Robert G. Ingersoll's grave. Indeed, Ingersol was a great American Atheist, but, we do not
think that visiting his grave is the proper way to
acknowledge his achievements. We believe it would
be much more of a tribute to this great man to
follow the things he strived for, study his works,
and make them available to the rest of the public.
The origins of burial rites are purely religious
and we as Atheists do not believe in perpetuating
these silly customs. According to the "Stone Theory", referred to by Madalyn Murray O'Hair in one
American Atheist radio broadcast, tombstones are
an outgrowth of an ancient rei igious custom whereby the dead were weighted down with large stones.
These primitive people were confused by sleeping
and comas which, to them, resembled death. To
assure themselves that the dead did not leave their
graves and spread contagious disease or do harm to
any of the living, they placed stones on top of the
graves. The graveyard fence is a further development along these lines, by a fearful superstitious
people.

Robert G. I ngersoll was an Atheist and opposed

religious ritual. The concern of the condition of
his grave is irrelevant. We as fellow Atheists should
recognize his achievements and continue his work.
Visiting his final resting place is in no way furthering the Atheist cause, which, is what Robert G.
Ingersoll's life was all about.
-Sara J. and Richard Blauman
Birmingham, MI
Comments from the Editor
I plead guilty to being a slobbering sentimentalist. I love
the Lincoln Memorial and, to use Old Abe's own words, I
think "that it is all together fitting and proper" that we
should have this gem in our capital. I doubt that "ecological considerations" should deprive
people of psychological benefits derived from the Tomb of
The Unknown Soldier or the eternal flame on the Kennedy
grave.
I really would hate like he/! to think that people cared so
little for me that they would refuse to give the token
consideration of taking the weeds off my grave.
There are so few great men and women that from all the
corners of the earth if their graves gathered together it
would not take an acre of land.
I have, myself, stood in humbleness before the gravesof
Darrow, of Geliteo, of Darwin, and many others. I would
personally scrub the grave with a tooth brush, if necessary,
or get on my knees to pull out the weed enroechments, or
plant a small living blossoming plant there. I would do it
because I owe these people all of my freedoms, all of my
happiness, all of my life. I am deeply endebted to them, as
is all mankind. Living they should have had much more
honor than they did; dead we should hold every rememberance of them close to our heart.
We have a lifetime to enlarge and carryon the trust of
the freedoms which they gave us. A small time, an afternoon, a five minute walk, a little labor would not preclude
that dedication for the other possible 65 or 70 or 75 years
of 24 houri days we have in which to do,
If none of you clean up lnqersotl's grave my granddaughter, my sons and I will do it. The next time we are in
Washington, D.C. we can plan an extra day, we have the
heart, the time, the inclination, the love. .. We would be
honored and privileged.
Meanwhile, I am very ashamed for Mr. Thompson and
for Sara and Richard Blauman who rationalize away their
human duties but do not indeed evidence in their association with us the "determination to advance Atheism, which
they use as an excuse for not doing a small chore.

~t Cfbitorial
This year, the Winter Solstice will be at 12:36
P.M., Eastern Standard
Time, on December
21st,
1976.
At that time, in Austin, Texas, we will be celebrating the central festive occasion and we are instructing
every State Chapter
to do the same.

Tradition always has the antecedent

when the tradition did not exist.

Celebrate
with us!! We are going to trim our
home with ivy and holly and mistletoe,
with two
big solstice trees full of natural decorations
...
and we are going to wassail and sing and eat roast
game and baked apples.
But, just two minutes
before
the time of the Solstice,
at 12:34 P.M.,
we are going to stop to read a "small. solemn,
poetic statement
about the Solstice and its meaning to mankind all these years. Then, at 15 seconds
to Solstice we are asking everyone
to observe a
silence
until the Solstice
ticks in. At exactly,
12:34 P.M. we are going to light a candle (symbolizing the 'rebirth of the sun') and at that instance,
we are all going to sing "Auld Lange Syne" - for
this is indeed the new year, the new swing of the
earth around
the sun, and the beginning
of the
lengthening
of the days again.

of a time

If the traditions
associated with Atheism are to
exist then we must bring them into existence.
In
the year 2976 our decendents can not celebrate
the 1,000 year of history of certain Atheist memorials unless we cause those events to occur now.
It is in this spirit that we ask you to participate
with us in the First Annual International
Celebration of the Winter Solstice. As of this year, 1976,
we are seizing four moments
of time generated by
the functioning
of our solar system. We plan to
recognize and celebrate
these
moments
on an
international basis. They transcend
any limitations
of national border, all religions, or anything having
to do with race or sex. These are moments
to be
recoqnized by all mankind. They are, of course, the
Summer and Winter Solstice and the Vernal and
Autumnal Equinoxes.
As you know, the Equinox is either of the two
times each year when "the sun crosses the equator" and day and night are everywhere
of equal
length, being about March 21st (the Vernal Equinox) and September
23rd (the Autumnal
Equinox).
The Solstice is one of the two points on the
ecliptic at which its distance
from the celestial
equator is greatest and which is reached by the sun
each year about June 22 (the Summer Solstice)
and December 22 (the Winter Solstice).

~~~)~~~~~~)~~~~~~~"~~~"M~

'

We plan to have every news media representative

available to come to our home for the event. We
are inviting Associated
Press, United Press, the Religious Press, NBC, CBS, ABC, NET, all the newspapers,
the local radio and television
stationsto let everyone see the real meaning of this time of
the year. This is the first time, ever, that the
holiday has been seized officially,
by a group having a right to do so, and calling the attention
of
the world to the need for celebrating
of this phenonomenon
of our solar system.
You can send us some pictures
of your celebration--and
we will see that you all have pictures
of ours. They will be in the next issue of the
magazine.

~o
o,~

Speaking for Women:

Anne Gaylor
All of those exhortations, sermons and slogans this time of year, urging tht we put "Christ
back in Christmas" are particularly
irritating to
those of us non-religionists who would like to go
even further back and put the pagan back in Christmas.
The festival known as Christmas is ancientfar, far older than Christianity. It is a relic of sunworship, a celebration that the days were once
again beginning to grow longer, that the life-giving
sun was not gradually going out. The festival was
usurped by Christianity
(one can see why), but it
does not belong to Christian itv, It belongs to us
pagans, and we are willing to share, but we do
claim the credit.
The joy of being a non-Christian at Christ. mastime is that you can take from this modern day
festival what you will-the
greetings of the holidays, letters to and from long-ago friends, the music (wh ile forgetting the words), decorations (sans
angels and creches, of course), good foods, flowers,
and all kinds of presents. For Christmas is a festival. ,
And festivals are very important

It is blissful fun to have special days to anticipate and to reminisce about, and far from Christmas being "just another day" to the non-religionist's child, it is avery special time, too.
An absolutely stupendous event, when I was
little, was the Christmas program in our one-room
country school. We spoke "pieces" and performed
little comedy skits-I'm
not sure they turned out
to be comedy, whether serious in intent or not.
The same wide planks were stored in the school
woodshed and used each year for the stage, and a
couple of them had been spl intered over the years
with gaps a small foot could easily go through. So,
in addition to remembering our lines, we had to
remember just where, under the rag-carpeted stage,
lay those booby traps, There was always at least
one nervous performer who forgot, tripped, and set
the rest of us off in very unprofessional giggles.
Our programs were not religious, aside from
the words of some of the carols. We relied heavily
1976/ American

Atheist

- 18

Last year, for the holiday season, I wrote a

nostalgia piece that was published in a Wisconsin
newspaper. It is being reprinted here, since it somehow fits the season.

Perhaps it is because this is the season for

nostalgia. Or maybe I have reached the age where
childhood memories start coming back full force.
Or possibly it is just that the kid's conversation was
about people who had birthdays on the same day.
"Hey, Whitey Ford's birthday and mine are the
same-he was 25-4 one season." And, "Did you
know that Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln
were born on the very same day?"
In any event, quite suddenly, I remembered
Dottie, with whom I shared a birthday, and whom
I hadn't thought about for years and years

to ch ild-

ren.

December

on Santa Claus skits and our main prop was a cardboard fireplace with simulated flame-there
was
never a creche. At the end of the program when
Santa Claus came in, he did not bring religion-he
broutht gifts!

Back in the 1930's any departure from the

normal routine was a memorable event in our oneroom country school, but there was high excitement the morning a man in "city clothes': brought
a new girl to enroll in school. He brought her in
mid-morning after classes were already under way,
and I remember someone whispering with a giggle,
"She's late her first day!" For some reason at our
school being late was far worse than not being
there at all.
From my seat on the aisle I covertly studied
the newcomer. She looked frail, and a little lonesome and scared, like she wanted to cry. She was
delicately pretty with ash blonde hair and green
eyes. Her clothing looked skimpy and much too
lightweight
for our sharp, early winter weather.
The teacher and her father were discussing grade
placement and I heard him say"should be in fourth
grade, but she's been in a lot of different schools."
I puzzled over her father. He seemed young
to have a school-aged daughter, and it was curious
to see a man on a weekday not dressed in overalls

.~.

Our friendship was instantaneous. On our

first walk home after school we talked about our
favorite books and our favorite movie stars (Shirley
Temple, of course, with a kind word for Jane Withers). Then out of the blue, Dottie asked, "When's
your birthday?"
"It's Nov. 25," I answered, adding, "1 was born on Thanksgiving Day. " She hesitated a moment. "That's my birthday, too," she
said. Our friendship was sealed.

.QP.

Illustration

by Annie Laurie Gaylor

December 19761 American Atheist - 19

and jacket. He didn't look like a farmer. Where did

they live and why had no one known there would
be a new family? I remember his face, dark and
tense, as he said goodbye to h is daughter, and then
the teacher brought her to an empty seat across
from mine.

I shielded Dottie from these stories and

never mentioned them to her. Increasingly, we
spent our play time together, excluding others. We
had a common bond-our
missing mothers. My
mother was dead-she had died when I was a baby-and Dottie had not seen her mother for years.

At noon recess, over our sandwiches, we

learned that Dottie had been born in California
and had lived in Arizona and "lots of other
places," that this was the first time she had ever
been in Wisconsin.

Our birthdays came and Dottie joined me

for a birthday supper. Her only present was my
small gift from the dime store. After supper our
housekeeper gave her a half-dollar, an impressive
gift to a child in the 1930's. Happily Dottie told us
she was going to buy some stationery and send it
to her mother so her mother could write to her.

We were quite awed. Some of us had been as

far away as Milwaukee, and one boy had been born
in Chicago, but here was a girl who had lived in the
state of the movie stars. Her mother had been in a
hospital for years somewhere in California and she
was going to stay with "shirt-tail relatives" who
lived on the tenant farm adjoining ours. I was delighted. A new, interesting friend--someone
to
walk with on that cold mile to and from school.
Our friendship was instantaneous. On our
first walk home after school we talked about our
favorite books and our favorite movie stars (Shirley
Temple, of course, with a kind word for Jane Withers). Then, out of the blue, Dottie asked, "When's
your birthday?" "It's Nov. 25," I answered, adding, "I was born on Thanksgiving Day." She hesitated a moment. "That's my birthday, too," she
said. Our friendship was sealed.
The relatives Dottie was staying with were a
young couple who had lived on the rental farm
next to ours for several months. I did not know
them very well; they seemed rather uninteresting.
They had lost a baby, a stillbirth, and I thought
perhaps that was why they had agreed to take Dottie, because they wanted a child around.
At first they were nice to Dottie, but often,
when I met her at the foot of our driveway in the
morning for our walk to school, I could see she had
been crying. She spent more and more time at our
house, coming in after school.
The stories were starting to circulate about
Dottie, that her father had left her with these relatives, promising to send money for her care, but
no money was sent, and they did not know where
he was. Someone said her mother was not in a hospital at all, but had been in prison for years. One
boy told me his mother thought that Dottie was
probably illegitimate (a new word to both of us),
and he said, "She doesn't even know when her
birthday is. That's why she said it was the same
day as you rs."

At our school the event ot the year was the

Christmas program held at night, and we started
memorizing "pieces" and practicing our songs soon
after Thanksgiving. Everyone had something new
to wear for the program; it was tradition. My father had ordered a new, red dress for me from the
Sears Roebuck catalog, but I worried about Dottie,
whose limited wardrobe had nothing she had not
worn before.
And then, an aunt of mine sent me a dress
she had sewn, a pretty blue silk print with long,
elaborate sleeves. Providentially,
she. was out of
touch with how much I had grown, and the dress
was just too short and tight. But it fit frail Dottie
to perfection. The Christmas program night was
memorable, and we were both blissful in our finery.
Then, one January morning Dottie did not
meet me at the foot of our driveway. I waited,
jumping up and down in the cold, and finally
walked to the neighbor's farm and knocked at
their kitchen door. The young couple told me, not
unkindly, that Dottie's father had come unexpectedly the night before to take her away. They were
not sure where she was going. There had been 60
time to say goodbye.
Sadly I walked alone to school, fighting
back the tears. The school year stretched ahead,
bleak and dreary, without
my friend. I watched
the mailbox for months, but I did not hear from
Dottie. In the spring the young couple moved away
to Minnesota, and even that tenuous link was gone.
For a few years I thought about Dottie on
my birthday, and then, unintentionally,
I put my
memory away. I would never know what happened
to the little girl who shared my birthday so long
ago.

f
f

n
i
b
c'

ti

c
w
December

1976/American

Atheist

- 20

The Solstice Season

Program 30
KTBC Radio

December 23, 1968

Austin, Texas

Hello there,
This is Madalyn Murray O'Hair,
Atheist, back to talk with you again.

victory over the hosts of night. Such a festival was

natural and beautiful.
The most natural of all
religions is the worship of the sun. Christianity
adopted this festival. It borrowed from the Pagans
the best it has.

American

Someone stole something from me. I don't

like it. What was stolen from me and from you was
the most beautiful holiday in the world. Robert G.
Ingersoll was angry about th is theft too. Let me
read to you what he had to say about it. He wrote
a very famous "Christmas Sermon." It was printed
in the Evening Telegram newspaper, New York,
New York on December 19, 1891. The ministers
of the day attacked the newspaper and demanded
a boycott at it. The Telegram accepted the challenge and set off an issue across the country. The
paper printed the Rev. Dr. J. M. Buckley's (is he
related to the present famous Buckley?) attack,
and Robert Ingersoll's answer. It was a real donnybrook. Let's hear what Ingersoll had to say:
"The good part 'of Christmas is not always
Christian, it is generally Pagan; that is to say, human and natural.
Christianity did not come with tidings of
great joy, but with a message of eternal grief. It
came with the threat of everlasting torture on its
lips. It meant war on earth and perdition hereafter.
It taught some good things, the beauty of
love and kindness in man. But as a torch-bearer, as
a bringer of joy, it has been a failure. It has given
infinite consequences to the acts of finite beings,
crushing the soul with a responsibility
too great
for mortals to bear. It has filled the future with
fear and flame, and made god the keeper of an
eternal penitentiary, desti ned to be the home of
nearly all the sons of men. Not satisfied with that,
it has deprived god of the pardoning
power.
And yet it may have done some good by
borrowing from the Pagan world the old festival
called Christmas.
Long before Christ was born the sun-god
triumphed over the Powers of barkness. About the
time that we call Christmas the days began perceptibly to lengthen. Our barbarian ancestors were
worshippers of the sun, and they celebrated his

I believe in Christmas and in every day that

has been set apart for joy. We in American have
too much work and not enough play. We are too
much like the English.
I think it was Heinrich Heine who said that
he thought a blaspheming Frenchman was a more
pleasing object to god than a praying Englishman.
We take our joys too sadly. I am in favor of all the
good free davs, the more the better.
Christmas is a good day to
get, a good day to throwaway
hatreds, a good day to fill your
house, and the hearts and houses
sunshine."

forgive and forprejudices and

heart and your
of others with

Would you believe that such a warm Christmas sermon could cause religious people to start a
vicious attack on a newspaper for publishing it?
I ngersoll used the word "borrow."
He said that
Christians borrowed
the pagan hol iday. I use a
stronger word. They stole it. They stole the beautiful holiday of man, and what for?
They claim that this is the birthday of Jesus
Christ. Let's look at their scholars, and their history, and see if th is is a fact. You most probably
all know A. T. Robertson, a late professor of New
Testament Greek at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.
He has written a standard textbook
on the so-called Broadus
Harmony of the Gospels and it is used in every
school of religion across the land. In this book is
summarized all the findings of religious scholarship
in relationship
to Jesus Christ and, among other
things, the date of his birth.
After a lengthy exploration
of when Jesus
Christ may have been born, Dr. Robertson sets the
date at, hold on now, the summer or early fall of
the year B.C. 6 or B.C. 5. Did you hear that? In
the summer or the fall. Recently the idea of the
first week of January has gained some following.
But no one who is a religious scholar believes
December 25th. One must calculate from the possible death of Herod, or the appearance of the soDecember

1976/ American

Atheist

21

called star in the East, which could have been a

comet recorded by the Chinese or a conjunction of
the planets Jupiter and Saturn, but the Greenwich
Observatory says that the conjunction appearing as
a single star was very unlikely. Or one can judge
the "time of universal peace," that is, no war, of
which the heavenly host sang, but there was never
any stoppage of war in that time.
One can guess from the so-called ministry of
John the Baptist, or the age of Jesus upon his entry
into the ministry, or the building of the Temple of
Herod, or the closing of the temple of Janus, or the
so-called census of Augustus Cawsar. All of these
lead the poor theologians in ever-increasing directions away from the idea of Christmas and the year
Zero or One of our present calendar.
Actually the idea of December 25th is untenable. All the ancients in Christian history had
various days for Christ's birth. Clement of Alexandria, who was closer to that time, said it was
May 20. April 20th and January 6th have always
appeared as possible dates. Why did the Christians
want the twenty fifth of December? \fvhy that particular date? Why did they steal this very important date from the Pagens?
There are four points in our calendar which
we use and which we call "Solstice" or "Equinox"
points, two of each. The latter is easy: we say that
the equinox is when the sun crosses the equator of
the earth and day and night are everwhere of equal
length. The sun does not actually cross the equator, we all know that. But with the earth's natural
tip on its natural axis as it whirs around the sun,
this seems to be so. Then, either one part of our
old ball of earth gets the most sun, or the other
part does. But on these two occasions, the days are
equal in length everywhere and this occurs about
March 21st and September 23rd.
The Solstice is something different. 'lve don't
go around the sun in a circle, we tour around it,
on our earth, in an ellipse, which is a flattened
circle, and oval. When we are in the points furthest
away from the sun, we have another phenomenon.
Twice a year, when the sun is at its greatest distance from the celestial equator, about June 21st
when the sun reaches its northernmost
point on
the celestial sphere, or about December 22nd when
it reaches its southernmost point, we call these moments the solstice. The solstice in December is the
time when the days of the year, in our hemisphere,
are the shortest.
Primitive man, and pagan man, were not
idiots, you know. They saw this. Always they
feared that the days would get shorter and shorter
December 1976/American Atheist - 22

and shorter, and finally what if there were only

night! What a frightening thing, when the sun was
so necessary for life, from common observation. So
when the day came for the sun to overcome the
darkness, and for the sun to cause the days to be
longer, even if just a minute or so longer, it meant
that there was not going to be eternal night. The
sun had won a fight again. Darkness had had to recede and slowly the days would get longer and
longer until spring and summer, with food growing
again, would be everywhere.
And so every primitive culture had a festival
or a feast on this day. It was celebrated in China, in
India, in South America, in Mexico, in Africa, in
every single place where man could watch days and
nights. There were presents given, exchanged as a
symbol, for the sun had brought the most precious
gift of all to man: the warmth needed for life and a
re-cycle of the year. The ancient men noticed other
things too. Certain trees stayed green all year
round, a promise of the abundance of spring and
summer to come again. The light of the sun, and
the light of stars, and green trees, and mistletoe
and gift-giving became very important; that, and
revelry. 011, it was the most joyous of all occasions.
There was universal singing and dancing and laughing and well being. It was wild and wonderful and
human and warm. It was the best of all festivals.
It was the gayest of all feasts. It was the warmest
and best of all human activities.
The Christians were no fools. If they permitted the pagan holidays to continue to exist it
could challenge the very basis of the Christian religion. First came edicts outlawing the pagan holiday. Incorporate it into the Christian religion. Oh,
it took some time. It took many years to effect
this. It took much propaganda and it took many
penalties and reprisals against those who continued
with the old festival. Eventually the Christian commun ity won the day. Then there was a change
from the Gregorian calendar to the present day calendar, and with that change Christmas or the Solstice shifted a few days so that December 25th became officially recogn ized as a Christian day.
There are many of you in the listening
audience old enough to remember Armistice Day.
That was the day that World War I was ended and
it was celebrated for thirty years or more until a
second World War broke out. After we veterans
came home from that we found out that there was
no more Armistice Day. Instead there was Veteran's Day. All the people in the audience tonight
who are twenty-five years old or younger, never
even heard of Armistice Day. They only know Veteran's Day, for that is all they were ever taught.
That is how it is with Christmas. Finally no one

ever heard of the Solstice, and everyone came to

believe that the Christians were celebrating the
birthday of Jesus Christ.
But Bible scholars know better and Atheists
know better, and we celebrate that old and wonderful and joyous season. We even sell Solstice
cards for this season of Christmas and the New
Year, and let me read you what it says on them.
With mistletoe, the greetings are for a wonderful
Winter Solstice Season for you and the legend says:

"December 25th by the Julian calendar, was

the winter solstice. This day, originally regarded by
thepagansas the day of the nativity of the sun, the
shortestday of the year-when the light began its
conqueringbattle against darkness-was celebrated
universallyin all ages of man. Taken over by the
Christians as the birthday of their mythological
Christ,this ancient holiday, set by motions of the
celestialbodies, survives as a day of rejoicing that
good will and love will have a perpetual rebirth in
the minds of men-even as the sun has a symbolic
rebirth yearly."

llkbattu
Despite the
of our nation
originated the
to remember

"fact" 'taught in the public schools

that Moses and the Jewish religion
concept of monotheism,
it is well
in this special Solstice Issue of the
AmericanAtheist Magazine, that the monotheistic
concept most probably originated with Pharaoh
Amenophis IV, who adopted the name of Ikhnaten. He was king of Egypt from about the year
1375 B.C. to about the year 1357 B.C. A permissive, peace-loving, internationalist
in value orientation, he changed the history of Egypt.
The royal sun god, at this time, was Re, who
stood for the unseen, creative solar force. The visible sun disc [represented on page 28 of this magazine] came into emergence then. For the first
time, the falcon-headed man crowned gave way to
great innovations. The human and bird forms were
swept away and the divine power was expressed by
a disc bearing the uraeus of kingship and the long
rays each ending in a beneficent hand. These rays
stretched out to all and sundry.
After the adoption of the rayed disc, new temples were built. In place of the dark sanctuaries of
existing Egyptian temples, their courts were now
wide open to the rays of the Aten. The main festivities were always to celebrate the eternal return of
the Aten, the sun in his care of the lands, the peop-

This is a natural, Atheist, way of saying,

Greetings of the Winter Solstice Season" to you.
You can purchase these cards from us at two dollars a dozen for your next Solstice. Just write to
Society of Separationists,
Inc. P. O. Box 2117,
Austin, Texas, 78768. We are a non-profit,
nonpolitical
organization
dedicated to the complete
separation of church and state.

This informational broadcast is brought to

you as a public service by the Society of Separationists, Inc. This series of American Atheist Radio
programs is continued through listener generosity.
The Society of Separationists, Inc. predicates its
philosohpy on American Atheism. For more information, or for a free copy of the script of this program, write to P. O. Box 2117, Austin, Texas. That
zip is 78768. If you want a free copy of this particular script ask for number 411. The address,
again, for you is P. O. Box 2117, Austin, Texas,
and that zip, again, is 78768.
I will be with you next week, same day of
the week, same time, same station. Until then, I
do thank you for listening and 'goodbye' for now.
les and living things by his light. Nature was
felt to be in rejoicing with its solar benefactor,
and vegetation burgeoned, beasts gamboled, fished
leapt and birds raised their wings in praise of the
sun. It was an altogether joyful religion.
The art of the time became liquid. Formal public scenes gave way to the liveliest portrays of the
royal couple embracing, eating, and driving out
together, or playing with their babies. The traditional scenes of the Pharoah as hunter, warrior,
trampler of his subjects were rare or absent. The
palaces were bright with realistic paintings of the
plants and the creatures of the Nile.
Toward the end of I khaten's reign he ordered
that all names of other gods, all words implying a
plurality
of gods, be struck from all public monuments.
Little, if any, unbiased research has gone into
this period. Instead the Christian tradition of the
Jewish religion having originated
the concept of
monotheism
is advanced, despite the contradictions to the same in the Old Testament. Unless we
move to counter these fallacious myths, they will
stand.
Probably Ikhaten gave more impetus to the celebration of the Solstice season than any other historical figure. We' should honor him for his sagacity in an age of incredible ignorance and primitive
thought.

December 1976/ American Atheist - 23

Joseph McCabe
As I have said, there is no clue in the Gospels to
the time of the year when Jesus is supposed to
have been born: except, indeed, that it cannot have
been midwinter, for that is the rainy season and
shepherds would not be out in the night. Even
Jewish mothers would cherish birthdays:
but
Miriam of Nazareth either forgot the date of that
very wonderful day or omitted to mention it in her
communication,
late in life, of the remarkable
story. Early Christendom
found
itself in the
peculiar position of telling the world of the most
tremendous birth there ever was on this planet and
being quite unable to say when it happened. It was
centuries before even the year could be determined; and then it was determined
wrongly.
Nobody now holds that Jesus was born in the year
1 A.D.
The result was that for several hundred years the
various churches celebrated the birthday of the
lord on different dates. The eastern churches generally kept it on January 6th, which is now the
Epiphany. Other churches chose April 24th or
25th, and some placed it in May. It was not until
354 A.D. that the church chose December 25th as
the anniversary of the birthday of Christ. Rome
was then the leading church; and why Rome
hesitated so long, and why in the middle of the
fourth century (when it was, with imperial aid,
trying to bring in the whole Roman Empire) it had
chosen December 25th, we must now see.
In order to real ize it, to see how the rise of
Christianity is a very human part of human evolution, let us imagine ourselves as members of the
small and obscure group of Christians in Rome,
say, in the fourth century. We have two poor meeting places - one of them is a room above a small
wineshop - in the despised quarter of Rome
beyond the river (the slope of the Vatican Hill)
where criminals live and the dead are buried.
Midwinter approaches and Rome is lit up with
joy. It is the festival of the old vegetation-god
Saturn who (as a god) died, or was displaced by
Jupiter, the sky-god. But he has a fine temple on
the Capitol, and his festival lasts seven days and is
the most joyous time of the joyous Roman year.
For one day slaves are free. They don the conical
cap of the freedman - as good Christians continue
at Christmas to don such caps of paper, and
hilarious Americans don them at festive dinners
today - and sit at table while masters wait on
them.
December 1976/American Atheist- 24

Stalls laden with presents line the streets near

the Forum; and the great present of the season is a
doll, of wax or terra cotta. Hundreds of thousands
of dolls lie on the stalls or in the arms of passersby.
by. Once, no doubt, human beings were sacrificed
to Saturn, and, as man grew larger than his religion,
as he constantly does, the god (or his priests) had
to be content with effigies of men or maids, or
dolls. Crowds fill the streets and raise festive cries.
It was a time of peace on earth - for by Roman
law no war could begin during the Saturnalia - and
of good will toward all men.
For a whole week, from December 17th to 24th,
no work is done. The one law is good cheer, good
nature. But the 25th also is a solemn festival, for
it is marked in large type in the Roman calendar
"Birthday of the Unconquered Sun."
Neither Romans nor Christians understood these
things. The festival went back far into the mists of
prehistoric times. It had been earlier a one-day festival, the feast of Saturn: a very important magicoreligious festival for insuring the harvest of the
next year, rejoicing that the year's work was over,
and, no doubt, helping and propitiating the god of
fecundity by generous indulgence in wine and love.
Dimly, also, these people knew that the mysterious
winter dying of the sun was arrested. It was on the
turn. But only an accurate astronomy could decide which was the reql day of solstice, so they
celebrated the 25th as the great day of the sun's
rebirth.
We can all understand the anxious debates of
these early Christians about the birthday of the
lord. Christ was the real sun that had risen upon
the world. Why not boldly take "the birthday of
the unconquered sun"? That would, incidentally,
help to conciliate "the masses." But all this ribaldry and license and fooling ... Besides, there
was another reason.
While the Christians gathered dingily in their
two little back rooms on the Vatican Hill, there
was another and more prosperous Asiatic religion
housed on the same hill. Mithraism, as it was
called, gave the Christians a very anxious time: not
merely because it spread more rapidly, and was
more respected, but because it was so strikingly
like Christianity.
Mithra was an old Aryan sun-god. The reform of
the Persian religion by Zarathustra had put the

seems to be a babe at the winter

solstice, as the
Egyptians represent him in their temples on a certain day: that being the shortest day, he is then
supposed to be small and an infant."

ethical deity Ahura Mazda so high above the old

nature-qods that he was practically the one god.
But Mithra stole upward, as gods do, and Persian
kings of the fifth century B.C. put him on a level
with Ahura Mazda.

And this is confirmed by, and receives very interesting additions

from, a Christian
writer, the
author
of the "Paschal
Chronicle."
He says:

Then the Persians conquered and blended with

Babyolon, and Mithra rose to the supreme position
and became an intensely ethical deity. He was, like
Aten, the sun of the world in the same sense as
Christ. He was honored with the sacrifice of the
pleasures of life, and was himself credited with no
amours as Zeus was. Drastic asceticism and purity
were demanded of his worshipers. They were baptized in blood. They practiced the most severe
austerities and fasts. They had a communionsupper of bread and wine. They worshiped Mithra
in underground temples, or artificial caves, wh ich
blazed with the light of candles and reeked with incense.

"Jeremiah
saying that

child-savior, born of a virgin and lying in a manger. Wherefore they still worship as a goddess a

virgin-mother,
and adore an infant in a manger.
(Col. 385 in the Migne edition, vol. XCII.)
The explanation
is, of course, ludicrous. As I explain in the chapter on Egyptian religion, Horus,
the deity in question, was a very old sun-god of the
Egyptians. In the adjustment
of the rival Egyptian
gods, when the tribes were amalgamated
in one
kingdom,
Horus was made the son of Osiris and
Isis. The latter goddess was, as I said, the sister and
the spouse (or lover) of Osiris; but whether we
should speak of her as Ita 'virgin mother"
is a
matter of words. In one Egyptian myth she was
fecundated
by Osiris in their mother's womb: in
another and more popular, she was miraculously
impregnated
by contact with the phallus of the
dead Osiris. Virginity
in goddesses
is a relative
matter.

, And every year they celebrated the birthday of

this god who had come, they said, to take away the
sins of the world; and the day was December 25th.
As that day approached,
near midnight
of the
24th, Christians might see the stern devotees of
Mithra going to their temple on the Vatican, and
at midnight it would shine with joy and light. The
savior of the world was born. He had been born in
a cave, like so many other sun-gods: and some of
the apocryphal Gospets put the birth of Ch rist in
a cave. He had had no earthly father. He was born
to free men from sin, to redeem them.

Whatever we make of the original myth, however, Isis seems to have been originally a virgin (or,
perhaps, sexless) goddess, and in the later period
of Egyptian religion she was again considered
a
virgin goddess, demanding
very strict abstinence
from her devotees. It is at this period, apparently,
that the birthday
of Horus was annually
celebrated, about December 25th, in the temples. As
both Macrobius
and the Christian writer say, a
figure of Horus as a baby was laid in a manger, in
a scenic reconstruction
of a stable, and a statue
of Isis was placed beside it. Horus was, in a sense,
the Savior of mankind.
He was their avenger
against the powers of darkness; he was the light of
the world. His birth-festival
was a real Christmas
before Christ.

F. Cumont, the great authority on Mithra, has

laboriously collected for us all these details about
the Persian religion, and more than one of the
Christian Fathers refers nervously to the close
parallel of the two religions. The Savior Mithra was
in possession, had been in possession for ages, of
December 25th as his birthday. He was the real
"unconquered sun": a sun-god transformed
into a
spiritual god, with light as his emblem and purity
his supreme command. What could the Christians
do? Nothing, until they had the ear of the emperors. Then they appropriated
December 25th, and
even bits of the Mithraic ritual; and they so zealoLlslydestroyed the traces of the Mithraic religion
that one has to be a scholar to know anyth ing
about it.
The Saturnalia and "the birthday of the unconquered sun" and the birthday of Mithra were not
all. A Roman writer of the fourth century, Macrobius, in a work called "Saturnalia"
(i, 18), discusses
the practice of representing the gods in the temples
as of different ages. He says:
"These differences of age refer to the sun, which

gave a sign to the Egyptian priests,

their idols would be destroyed
by a

&

In passing, we may recall that just such a spectacle is presented in every Roman Catholic church
in the world on December 25th. Catholics will tell
you that St. Francis of Assisi invented this tender
and touching method of bringing home to.men the
humble birth of the redeemer. I know too much
about Francis of Assisi to imagine that he had ever
read the obscure "Paschal Chronicle,"
in which I
discovered
this interesting
passage some years
ago. But certainly some other Christian writer had

~~

December 1976/Am,,;o,n Ath,;,,

~~~

'W

25

seen and reproduced it, and it had come to the

knowledge of Francis. If a Cathol ic prefers to believe that Francis of Assisi did in reality conceive
this method of representing the birth of Christ,
lie could not give us a better proof of the identity
of the Christian and the Egyptian
bel ief! The
Catholic "crib"
is an exact reproduction
of the
"show"
exhibited
in Egyptian temples centuries
before Christ; and the Egyptian legend itself is
thousands of years older than Jeremiah. On the
analogy of the Christian practice we may infer
that the Egyptian legend described Isid as having
given birth to her divine son in a stable. In Alexandria there was a similar Greek celebration
on
December 25th of the birth of a divine son to Kore
(the "virgin").
And this is not the end. The Greeks had a similar
celebration. The general idea of a divine son being
born in a cave was, as we shall see presently, common; or there were actually several scenic representations of the birth of these gods in their festivals. M. M. Robertson gives three in his "Christianity and Mythology"
(p. 330). Hermes, the Logos
(like Jesus in John), the messenger of the gods, son
of Zeus and the virgin Maia, was born in a cave,
and he performed
extraordinary
prodigies a few
hours after birth. He was represented as a "child
wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger." Dionysos (or Bacchus) was similarly represented. The image of him as a babe was laid in a
basket-cradle in the cave in which he was born.
There is a good reason to think that Mithra was
figured in the same way.
We understand why the church so long hesitated
to put the birth of Christ at the Winter Solstice,
and why there was no scenic representation of the
birth until the Middle Ages. From end to end of
the Roman Empire December 25th was the birthday of the unquered sun, of the Savior Mithra, and
of the divine Horus and they and the others I have
mentioned, whose festivals were in other seasons,
were represented almost exactly as the birth of
Christ was described in the Gospels and is depicted
in Catholic churches today.
And we must not overlook the Teutonic
element. Every Roman was familiar from childhood
with the great midwinter festival; and in the earliest days of the Christian era the religions of Persia
and Egypt, with similar festivals, spread over the
Empire. But the nations of the north also had their
greatest festival of year in midwinter.
To these
northern barbarians, shuddering in the snow-laden
forests beyond the Danube, the return of the sun
was the most desired event of the year; and they
soon learned, approximately,
the time--the Winter
Solstice- when the "wheel"
turned. The sun was

December 1976/American Atheist - 26

figured as a fiery wheel; and as late as the nineteenth century there were parts of France where a
straw wheel was set on fire and rolled down a hill,
to give an augury of the next harvest.
Hence "Yule"
(from the same old Teutonic
word' hoe! or wheel) was the outstanding
festival
of the ancestors of the French and Germans, the
English and Scandinavians. The sun was born; and
fires ("Yule-Iogs,"
such as are burned in British
homes
at
Christmas
today)
flamed
in the
forest-villages, the huts were decorated with holly
and ever-greens, Yule trees were laden with presents, and stores of solid wood and strong drink
were lavishly opened. This lasted until Twelfth
Day, now Epiphany.
Thus almost the entire civilized world of more
than two thousand years ago "had its Christmas
before Christ."
"The figure of Christ," says Kalthoff, "is drawn in all its chief features before a
line of the Gospels was written."
At least the figure
of Jesus in what is deemed its most captivating
form was drawn in every feature long before it was
presented in the Gospels. The first symbol of the
Christian religion, the manger or basket-cradle of
the divine child, the supposed unique exhortation
to humility,
was one of the most familiar religious
emblems of the pagan world. Had it been exhibited
to a crowd in one of the cosmopol itan cities of the
Empire, it would have been strange or new to very
few. One might pronounce it Horus, another Mithra, another
Hermes, another
Dionysos; but all
would have shrugged their shoulders nonchalantly
at the news that it was just another divine child
in the great family of gods. The world flowed on.
The names only were changed.

"1 don't care WHAT the 'Angel'

told you .... Mary, you're in trouble!"

~~~

",'

//1/\

<,

~pmbO~5 of \1!bt ~o15 ti r e ~ta5

on

Paul Kay
Long before the mythical Jesus Christ was invented, before the beginning of the Roman Empire
or the founding of Athens, even before Moses led
the supposed exodus from Egypt, men were celebrating a festival on or near the 25th of December.
The festival celebrated the rebirth of the sun and
its triumph over the forces of darkness.
The sun was depicted in ancient cultures as a
handsome, male, father figure who mated with the
earth goddess, causing fertility in the world. The
warmth of the sun caused vegetation to grow and
stimilated procreational activities in animals, causing them to mate and bear young. The sun was also
depicted as a young, blond god who slew dragons
and serpents which represented the forces of darkness and the cold days of winter.
According to Ernest Busenbark
in his book,
Symbols, Sex, and The Stars, "Because it was believed that the sun regulated the planting and harvesting periods, appointed and distributed
the seasons; ran th rough the cI imates, swayed the earth,
etc., the sun god was looked upon as a legislator,
lawgiver, conquering hero. Because the warm rays
of the sun were thought to promote cheerfulness
and good health, he was called the Bringer of Light
and Enlightenment,
Wisdom, Peace, Health and
Prosperity, the Good Physician and Savior of Hurnanitv, the Sun of Righteousness who overcame
disorder, chaos, strife, sickness and disease."
Thus, when the days in the northern hemisphere
began to get shorter and colder, it was bel ieved
that the sun was going to die and that the world
would be plunged into perpetual
darkness and
cold. Crops would wither, man and animals would
not reproduce, and carniverous beasts would use
the cover of darkness to pounce on their unsuspecting victims.
Fortunately, man learned that this was not going
to be so. Around the 22nd of December, there are
twice as many hours of darkness as there are hours
of light. The forces of darkness are then challenged
when the virgin goddess gives birth to a new sun,
replacing the old, dead god on the next day. It is
interesting to note that the day of the sun's rebirth
takes place when the constellation
Virgo (The Virgin) is in the sky. Thus, the concept of a virgin
birth, and at that time of year, long anteceded the
virgin birth of Jesus Christ.

The sun god was called different names by the

people of various and diversified cultures. He was
called Tammuz by the Babylonians,
Attis by the
Phrygians, Adonis by the Phoenicians,
Horus by
the Egyptians, Krishna by the Hindus, Quetzalcoatl
by the Aztecs, Apollo by the Greeks, Mithra by the
Persians, and of course, Jesus Christ by the Christians.
The nativity of these sun gods all reflected the
same story. With slight variations, the sun god, according to Busenbark, "was generally represented
as being born in a cave or cavern, his birth often
taking place after a conception of ten months; being born of an undefiled virgin mother of noble
family, the birth being heralded by blazing stars
and signs in the sky. The infant was said to have
been taken by his parents to distant lands to escape
from a jealous tyrant who wished to slay him. He
amazed his elders by his precocity, grew up in obscurity, healed the sick, and was crucified in the
prime of life. His death was marked by earthquakes, lightening and darkening
of the sky. He
was resurrected in three days and brought light and
peace to the world."
The day of the sun's rebirth was celebrated all
over the world by various festivals. One of the
grandest festivals was that of the Saturnalia in ancient Rome. For the duration of that celebration,
even slaves were free men and anyone had a chance
of becoming a king for a day.
The Winter Solstice festival was taken over by
the Christians as the date of birth of their Jesus
Christ. However, it was not until 530 A.D. that the
date of birth, December 25th, was officially declared by the Christian Church. It is interesting to
note that although Christmas is supposedly to celebrate the birth of Christ, certain Christian sects do
not celebrate
it because of its pagan origins and
connections.
Traditional
symbols of the season
such as mistletoe; evergreen, holly and ivy and the
yule log were pagan in origin and not Christian.
The evergreen, because of its perpetual greenness, was a symbol of fertility and perpetuation
in
ancient times. It was used in the ancient Greek festival of Thesmorphia
in which food and pine
branches were cast into. caves sacred to Demeter,
the goddess of grain and harvest. The use of evergreens at funerals in Norway and Russia symbol-

December

19761 American

Atheist

- 27

ized belief in immortality of the soul. In Norway,

it was customary to attach boughs of pine to a
house where a death had taken place in order to
keep away evil spirits.
In an ancient Teutonic rite, young girls would
dance around a fir tree, imprisoning the spirit of
the tree therein. The imprisoned evergreen imp was
thus forced to give the girls anything they desired.
The tree in this ceremony was decorated with eggs
and other symbols of fertility.
The mistletoe is another of the symbols of the
season. This plant is a parasite whose host plants
are most often the oak and the apple tree. Mistletoe is often found growing also, on evergreens.
Because of its strange properties such as being
green when its host is bare, and not growing in soil
but above it, the mistletoe was thought to have
miraculous powers.
The most famous legend concerning the mistletoe is the story of the death of Balder in Norse
mythology.
Balder, the son of Odin, chief of the Norse gods
had dreams which foretold his death. In order to
assuage h is fears, the goddess Frigga traveled
throughout the world asking all things not to harm
Odin's son. However, she neglected to extract an
oath from the mistletoe because it seemed too
puny and weak to do any harm. Loki, the god of
evil made the mistletoe into an arrow and used it
to slay Balder. The death of Balder is another legend of a god dying for the sins of man.
Today, it is a common custom to kiss beneath
the mistletoe. The mistletoe is a symbol of fertility. Any woman who is kissed beneath this plant
must surely bear children. The mistletoe was also
a plant of healing, protection,
and good luck.

December 1976/American Atheist - 28

Holly and ivy are two other plants which are

connected with the Winter Solstice season. The
Greek god of wine, Dionysus is often depicted
wearing a wreath of ivy leaves, thus giving rise to
the belief in ancient times that ivy had magical
powers to cause intoxication.
In later times, it was
believed, to the contrary, that ivy prevented intoxication.
Both the holly and ivy plants were regarded in
ancient times as having magical, protective powers.
I n Rome, sacred fires were started by ivy and bay
wood. Ivy growing on a house protected it against
witchcraft while wreaths of the plant on farm animals caused them to increase their produce. Pliny
believed that holly gave people the power to cause
obedience in animals.
The holly and the ivy were first used together in
the festival of the Saturnalia in ancient Rome. The
gathering of holly, ivy and evergreen during the
winter festival was derived from a magical rite
which gave assurance to the rebirth of crops and
other vegetation in spring.
When the early Christians took over the Saturnalia festival as their Christmas, they continued to
use the evergreen and other plants in the celebration. It has been suggested that the early Christians had corrupted the word holly into Holy Tree,
thus transforming
a pagan object and rite into a
Christian one.
There are several minor myths concerning these
two plants. Holly and ivy seem to figure in rituals
predicating love and future marriage. I n Scandinavian countries, boys and girls place ivy under their
pillows in order to help them dream of their future
spouses. Holly was burned together with mistletow and other ingredients by three unmarried girls
as part of a ritual which would enable them to see
visions of their future husbands.

~t ~ottr!,
SOLSTICE REVERIE
When
man was young, midwinter paeans rose
Above stone altars, as the chill earth turned.
The sun fulfilled man's hope and longer burned
As solstice festivals drew to a close.
~hrough
anguished centuries the homing sun
Wasmet with feasts and revelry.
A star, a manger babe, a green fir tree,
Became new symbols of the respite won

7Qy our forefathers from dark winter's sting.

~
They gave light greeting. We must give it birth,
Through love that shall illumine each man's worth
And by its glow lead all mankind to spring.
-Letha Curtis Musgrave

GREETINGS OF THE WINTER SOLSTICE

tithe sun has completed its journey
And now will return once again; To gladden
the crops and the vineyards,
And comfort the spirits of men.
ClEre Jesusand a/l of his coherts
Had made their appearance in time;
Or evenere glorious Homer
Had written one immortal linetlthen Athens wasstill in the future .
And Memphis wasstill in the mold;
By bards of the barbarous peoples
Thestory was told and retold.
Yes,evenbefore the god Krishna,
Whoselegend the Christian Church thieved
And taggedon their mythical Jesus
A story by millions believed=

~he

Sun god was worshipped at Yuletide

By peoples a/l over the earth
who knelt and gave thanks and oblations
To honor their patron's rebirth.

:1far

saner to worship this day star,

Which brings us the heat and the rain.
Than kneel to the god of the Christians
With horrors and wars in its train.

3$>0, in line with this old pagan custom,

From
But freed
I send my
-B.

which our holiday grew;

from the latter's delusions,
best greetings to you!
-'
M. Saner
--,~(
~,

December 1976/American Atheist - 29

England does it better.

The United States, in the English .speakinq
world, it outstanding
for its citizen's ignorance
when it comes to religion. Enqland has for over a
century
permitted
critical
analysis of religious
premises which Americans still swallow whole. It
is natural then that the first /popular' book to openly call Jesus a Hoax would appear-in England.
For over fifty years scholarly books of the same
nature have been available. to theologians
and
religious critics.
"
This book, The Jesus Hoax, appeared-sin a single
printing only-in
1974 in London. ltisa hardback
book, measuring 9Y:!" X 6Y:!", 282 pages in length.
The binding is sturdy, and the typeset is "Pilgrim".

of disillusionment.
It begins with the sense of Unreality which clouds the whole course of her conventual life, and leads her, eventually, to seek the
Reality of Jesus in a lonely and desperate study of
the gospels. Her search is rewarded-but
by what a
'Reality'!
For the Figure that ermerges, enigmatic, ambivalent, disconcerts and dismays her, and becomes,
ultimately,
horrifyingly
unacceptable. This Man's
obsession with Hell-fire and everlasting torments of
the Damned, betrays a schizophrenic
personality.
The fatal flaw in his character invalidates his Messianic claim and renders meaningless his message of
love.

The author is unusual. Phyllis Graham was born

in 1905 at Woodford,
Essex, in England. At a
young age she entered the Carmelite Orderof
the
Roman Catholic Church and remained it in for
twenty
years, until
a gnawing dissillusionment
forced her to leave the order.

The work of enlightenment

is completed long
after the nun, released from her Vows, has continued her journey of Faith in a difficult
world. But
the time comes for her to find a new environment
of intellectual
freedom, open to the influx of scientific knowledge and historical truth. At length
she is at liberty to examine the whole phenomenon
of Christianity
and its putative Founder.

She remained emotionally

attached to her religion after her intellect had set her free and during
that period she taught in various convent schools,
finally giving up her profession "because I could
no longer subscribe to any requirements
of the
Catholic faith." She had a long period of study and
research until she encountered the English Humanist movement and what she calls "a new world"
of Freethought. The book is the recitation of that
which led her to reject all.

A now 'unblinkered'
scrutiny of the gospels exposes their inadequacy as the sole source of information on the man, Jesus, and brings the realization that his 'teaching', far from being beneficial
to humanity.
has grievously retarded social progress and degraded the level of intelligence.
A
study of Josephus unveils the barbaric background
of the Jesus-drama, suggesting byways of speculation; yet the Jewish historian (b. 37 AD) is significantly
silent,
like history
itself,
about Jesus.

A review of the book,

story:

The imposition of the Jesus faith-cult on beings

endowed with intellect and reason, thus negating
the accumulated
knowledge and wisdom of preChristian centuries, is recognized at last as a colossal Hoax, and a cruel distortion
of the human
psyche. Its effects on history are seen to be deplorable.
.

from

England,

tells the

This remarkable and provocative

book is the
work of a writer who, until a few years ago, would
not have associated the two ideas expressed in its
title. The story of her life is a strange one, partly
interwoven with thetheme.
Yet.this is not an autobiography. Nor is it a religious book, albeit its concern is the Cult that sired our present civilization.
Attracted
in early life by the magico-poetic
mask that Christianity
turns to the innocent, the
author fell for the seductions of the Roman Catholic Church, long before the rash of ecumenism
tarnished the power and the glory. Her childhood
dream seemed fulfilled when she became a nun in
the austere contemplative
Order of Carmel. At this
point in her controversial pilgrimage she introduces
u,s to the first.shadowy
sign of a long, slow process
i

December

1976/ American

Atheist

- 30

.- Finally the author turns from the murky past of

Jesus-worship
to its melancholy
present, and a
penetrating survey of the current contest between
lingering superstition,
supported by hypocrisy and
'Doublethink'
and the Rational Alternative, which
she has happ(ly accepted as the way of freedom,
fulfilment
and serenity of-mind,
The Jesus Hoax
is both compelling
turbing. It is Miss Graham's first book:
it will not be her last.

and disassuredly

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and inquiry

concerning

religious beliefs, creeds,

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and promote

3. To advocate, labor for, and promote in all lawful ways, the complete and absolute separation
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and must create his own destiny; and that his potential for good and higher development is
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The Society of Separationists, lnc., is a non-political, non-profit, ed cational, tax-exempt organization. Contrib-,_. ~~
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The Truth,
at last, Revealed

about

Heliqinn

Shocking? Perhaps. But it is only a -small

part of the fascinating mountain of evidence gathered in FREEDOM
UNDER SIEGE by attorney
Dr. Madalyn Murray O.Hair and her researchers as
part of their ongoing fight to preserve the First Amendment guaranty of the separation of state and
church - a guaranty of not just freedom of religion but freedom from religion.

FREEDOM
UNDER SIEGE
by Madalyn

o rqaniz ed

Murray O'Hair

Organized religion is working to destroy your

freedom. It strives to influence your elected representatives and to write the laws under which
you live, to regulate your children's schools and
dictate what is taught there, to censor your entertainment and choose what you and your neighbor can see and read, and to determine for all
women the right to control their lives and their
bodies. And it is your money that makes this
tyranny possible. The churches have their billions
invested in profit-making
enterprises; and their
wealth grows daily from gifts, grants, rents, interest, capital gains and government subsidies. They
are now financial giants, no longer dependent upon
their parishioners for support. What they count on
is their freedom from taxes. The churches' billions
are accumulated at your expense.

Official
government
and church
figures
prove that churches have as their membership only
a minority
of our citizens. This books shows the
continuing
pressures that this minority
exerts on
the lives of the majority of Americans.
Dr. O'Hair deals with politics, not religion;
with separation of state and church, not Atheism.
This report shows how your treasured liberties are
slowly being eroded as the churches increase their
power over every aspect of American life, limiting
your freedom of choice and even your-access to information regarding those choices.
FREEDOM
UNDER SIEGE dares to focus
on the facts about this growing threat - a threat
that our politicians and the press, radio and television have been unwilling to confront.
HARDCOVER

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