(AP Photo/Tina Fineberg)

Forget the war on Christmas. We Humanists have no time for that nonsense.  This time of year we are engaged in our own private hand wringing about whether or not to celebrate any of the variety of holidays presenting themselves as options this time of year.

It isn’t that we don’t want to celebrate Christmas.  Most of us do.  It is just that if we are going to celebrate Christmas, shouldn’t we also celebrate Hanukkah, Divali, the Solstice or even Saturnalia? 

Certainly we should celebrate Kwanzaa.  After all, Kwanzaa is based on Humanist principles even if Dr. Karenga only wanted humans of a particular skin color to celebrate it. 

And what are we to do with HumanLight, the official Humanist winter holiday celebration?  Sure, it’s a specifically Humanist holiday. But let’s be honest.  It just isn’t as fun as Christmas.

The problem isn’t that we don’t’ want to celebrate Christmas. It is that being the culturally aware well educated folks that we are, we have too many options.  And if we try to avoid the religious baggage, we are left with something choices that seem inherently unfun.

So, every year, Humanists all over the globe debate, discuss and rationalize their personal choices when it comes to how they celebrate ‘the holidays.’  While a few do harbor some animosity to religion and so shun anything that has to do with it, most Humanists have a much more laissez faire attitude to ‘the holidays.’  The most common approach is to ignore the religious part of your favorite holiday and keep all the goodies.  Which does mean that Christmas warriors for Christ do have a point.  Humanists who adopt this approach are part of the problem when it comes to the secularization of the Christmas holiday.

But I think there is a larger lesson to be learned from this perennial debate. Regardless of which holiday Humanists choose to celebrate and how they choose to celebrate it, one basic fact remains.  Almost all of us agree that the real reason for the season is to take time to think of our loved ones near and far.  And to take time to think about the future and to pretend for just a little while that the world is as it should be and not as it really is.  In other words, this time of year is a time for everyone to spread a little love around and to treat everyone you meet with respect and compassion and to try and hold on to that feeling all year round.

Happy Holidays!