Yes, our European Christmas traditions borrowed a lot of images and practices from pagan cultures, as well as more recent borrowings such as Americans’ thanksgiving turkey. Some traditions - card giving, Santa Claus – are comparatively recent.

So what? No Christian I know thinks that fir trees, snow or men in red suits have any inherent religious significance.

Cultures borrow from each other all the time. And traditions adapt and are reinvented, carrying old meanings and morphing into new. Christmas is becoming more secular as our wider culture becomes more secular. Is the chant Ozzie-Ozzie_Ozzie un-Australian because it was stolen from the Welsh?

I’m glad non-religionists find so much to celebrate in this season, and I’m happy to celebrate with them. I’m a Christian but was raised in an atheist household and we had wonderful Christmasses in my childhood. it seemed we had everything our Christian neighbours had except the churchgoing.

Yet ...

I get far more from Christmas now than I did as a child, because I am now a Christian. While most people are in a frenzy of parties and purchases in the lead-up to Christmas, the liturgical churches are deep in the thoughtful, rather sober spirit of advent, with its focus on preparation and hopeful anticipation. Stripped of some of its spiritual meaning, its seems to me that secular Christmas is tending to become more grossly material and and excessive, with decorations and Christmas gifts entering the shops weeks before the event, and gifts and food become a benchmark of a "good" Christmas.

The things that are central to secular Christmas – gifts, time off, family, gratifude, sentimentality, a little over-indulgence in food and wine – are part of my Christmas too. But they are not the point of it, and in fact are all the more enjoyable because they’re not the point.

Great Article Chrys. I too get kind of tired of the Christians claiming a monopoly on "the meaning of" Christmas. To me the meaning is in the getting together with family and friends, the feasting and the drinking. The giving and receiving of presents. The happiness that it brings to the children and the celebration of another year nearly at its end. That is quite enough meaning for me.

I don't know if I have any spirituality. I most certainly don't believe in any god, christian or otherwise.

I do get a special feeling when surfing a wave, on a board or in a yacht. Riding a horse, canoeing down a river, or trying to set a lap record around Bathurst gives the same effect. Is that spiritual?

I may not be a christian, but that doesn't mean I don't approve of it. At school I was the only bloke in the debating team. The five girls were all daughters of local church ministers. Boy did they give me a hard time, attacking me with missionary zeal. It was all to no effect.

They had to settle for the fact that I approve of christian ways, if not the belief. In the 60s it seemed to me that all the best & kindest countries were based on the christian faith. I don't see that much has changed since then. So let everyone enjoy Christmas, even if they don't believe.

Of course, Christmas is one thing, but for me, Easter on the Mount, for me means Easter on Mount Panorama Bathurst, not on a mount in some middle eastern country.

This article is fraudulent. It is just a flimsy excuse for an unseemly display of intolerance by someone who likes baiting Christians.

"I can’t speak for all atheists, of course, but..."

Absolutely spot on, Ms Stevenson, you can't.

Like it or not, Christians have been celebrating Christmas at Christmastime for a long time. Certainly long enough to claim it as their tradition, not yours.

What was your beef again? That a bunch of evangelicals had grabbed an opportunity to re-inject a religious slant on the carol concert. Sounds quite reasonable to me, given that the locals seem to have turned it into some kind of sub-variety show, complete with drunken fat man in a red suit.

Don't like it? Organize your own.

The "origins" of the festival may indeed be pagan. The religious rationale for celebrating "baby Jesus" may also be questionable, on many fronts. But the tradition of singing Christmas carols does not "pre-date Christ by hundreds or even thousands of years". And certainly owes nothing to vaudeville, as you seem to think it should.

Sing, or don't sing. It's your choice. But it is fatuous to complain when your annual cheese-fest finds itself reclaimed by its previous owners.

Our predominantly European-origin society inherited Christmas, along with Easter, from our predominantly Christian-oriented forbears. I for one am happy to go along with the sentiment of Christmas - family, togetherness and such (and with a chocolate covered Easter, of course. What's with that?) - simply because it is traditional.

One aspect of that tradition is the festival of nine lessons and carols from Kings. It has intrinsic artistic beauty, whether or not you happen to believe the "lessons". The religious content does not offend, in the same way that the libretto to Mozart's Requiem, or Mendelssohn's Elijah doesn't offend.

It certainly wouldn't be improved by a visit from Santa.

Sorry, I'm with the happy-clappys on this one. They have more of a right to bring Jesus back into the event than you have to pretend to complain about it, simply in order to score a few cheap points against Christians.

Pericles I agree with what you wrote.

I am a atheist and do not agree with this article. Then again online opinion is a place for the author to share her opinion and put it out there. Which she has, this is her view point and it takes many people to make up a world. If we all agreed what a boring place we would live in.

My personal way I celebrate or do not celebrate Christmas is individual for me. I do not feel that Christians have ruined xmas in anyway shape or form for myself. I feel PC and not wanting to offend people may have changed the landscape of Christmas. I do not think we cant dismiss how the author feels or her opinions that would not be fair.

I agree if someone does not like it then it would be a good idea if they felt inspired to do something about this and hold a atheist or non religious carols by candlelight. Some people only notice and look for the negative and maybe this time of year brings up sadness for this author and many people in her situation. Maybe they feel jibbed that Christmas was kind of encouraged and celebrated by people who are Christian.

Chyrs says:

//But, in the midst of the gift-giving, child-hugging, relentless teasing and indecent gorging of rum balls and white Christmas, I will pause to give thanks, not to any deity, but simply to remember that as an Anglo-Celtic, middle-class Australian I’ve won life’s lottery. What better reason to celebrate the season?//

Well... that Christ came into the world would be a pretty good one.
Chyrs...I feel so sorry for you in that approach. You have an opportunity to celebrate the coming of God incarnate to the world

6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross! (Phil 2)

Johnny.. you rascal :)

//Atheism is simply not believing in deities// - /there is no doctrine./

You funny boy....you STATE the 'doctrine'.."No Deities" then you deny that you have one....now you should sit back and toss that around in your fertile mind a bit mate. May the Lord of Glory open your mind and heart.