I celebrate the Solstice. That was the original reason for the season, anyway.

Xmas has nothing to do with Jesus. Grow up and quit trolling.

Time off from work to relax with great company and good food. A good couple of days to sort those thihds

Christmas has been a secular holiday for a long long time. It's much more about spending money buying presents than jesus

A corporate plot!

It's a time for visiting with family and friends. Wonderful, heart-warming traditions minus church. I have been an atheist since age 13.

Christmas cactus I started from two cuttings at age 17.

Dolls made by my great aunts and uncles. Also dolls from different countries I treasured since childhood. My grandmother enrolled the girls in the International Doll Club.

Each November, I make Cranberry-Apple Chutney as gifts for family and friends.

Why do we have to believe in anything? It's just a good excuse for family to get together and celebrate a less serious time of year.

I just use it as good excuse to hang with friends and family. And to beat my family at board games of course.

Well, I still go out and decapitate a living tree, kill a turkey and pull off its feathers and eat it, kill some kilowatts using my christmas lights, eat enough for four people then complain for two months while some people go hungry while some asshole cut off food stamps just before "christmas". And there's the shopping with my six thousand pound truck spewing crap in the air and parking at the shopping mall with thousands of other insane shoppers.
What was that about "christ"?

i think it is a nice excuse to eat, drink and be merry, exchange gifts, what's not to like?

I don't celebrate Christmas. I am atheist/pagan, and celebrate Winter Solstice. The longest night and the shortest day of the year. Ancient people have wide variety of winter holidays, always on the same theme. A celebration of light. My family is Christian, my daughter is pagan, my son in law is Jewish, My brother in law is Buddhist, and I have lots of friends who are Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, UU, atheist, and they all have some variety of a winter holiday. I love feasting, giving gifts, getting gifts, lighting candles, playing games/cards and just having fun over the long night, and welcoming the " return of the sun", after the longest night is over. I follow the seasonal changes, the spiral of life, but I worship nothing. We often have a big meal, and invite people to share the meal with us. My son in law sometimes has post doc students from other countries, who can't really get home over the winter break, so they are fun to have at our feast. My daughter works with homeless people, and if one of them can't get a place to stay and eat, we have him/her out to eat with us. It is a great time of the year, and a wonderful time to share.

Christmas has nothing to do with Christ, like so much else it is a much, much, MUCH older celebration the the godbotherers appropriated for their own in a crass attempt to suck the joy out of it..

Since most of what Christians think of as Christmas came from pagan religions, I just laugh up my sleeve. I celebrate the Winter Solstice on the 21st and hope for better times as the world tips back toward the sun where I live.

Christmas is as much about consumerism as it is about religion. While I am not a big fan of either, it is apparent that the two things are linked by a cause-and-effect relationship. Arguably the religious belief in man's God-given dominion over nature has given rise to the false and dangerous attitude that Earth's resources are boundless and inexhaustible. Which is why collectively we continue to trash the planet's land, air, and water. And why, if we do not act with resolve and alacrity, we will soon drive the climate into an unstoppable feedback loop of catastrophic warming. This would have the effect of ending civilization and of driving mass extinction, thus drawing the curtains on our consumerism. If there is a silver lining to this menacing storm cloud it is that there is a certain balance, a certain symmetry in all this: the belief carries the seeds of its own destruction. Nature heals itself.

I love it. I give gifts to my athiest family. We eat, talk, laugh and have fun. Christmas isn’t really an exclusively Christian thing anymore. It’s a federal holiday & everything.

Even as a child and adolescent who was a believer, I never thought of Christmas season as a religious event. It was simply a time for family and sharing. As an atheist now, I still see it as that.

There is Festivus for the rest of us. I have a Festivus pole that I put up every december.

By Christmas you mean Festivus.... Yes?

I call it... A tradition. Nothing more. I bake no cake for Jesus' birthday.

The form of your question discloses a lot of innocence and narrow frame.

One indication, though broadly shared, is the notion that the holiday is in any way related to 'Jesus' and that either or both of them, as represented, have anything to do with reality. They are both largely conjured fictions, agreed upon by masses of people led by Judas Goat theologians and the all too amiable marketplace.

What began as winter solstice has gone through many fanciful reincarnations; the history of which is too long and sordid to list here.

My status as atheist is only a small part of why I reject not only gods, but the trappings (figuratively and real) that go along with them. In cases of many atheists, these left-over residues of erstwhile delusions 'go along with them. Nobody emerges from having been soaked in another environment, like liquid for example, without at least having to 'dry-off'. Sometimes what remains clinging to us is also what was suspended in that liquid, like 'brine'. Brine is another favorite illustration because if one has been soaked long enough in the brine of theological or ANY ideological thought system, the damage can be permanent.

Most 'isms' are toxic to healthy individual development and it follows that most of them are embossed prematurely on young, forming minds and nascent reasoning potential is 'strangled in the cradle' by well-meaning family, community and congregation...

More to the point of your question; I avoid acknowledging all compulsively established rituals and ritual days. That part isn't atheist. It is what can bring one to an atheist attitude. It is the ability to recognize that which harnesses and uses people in ways that use them up for the profit and comfort of those who mislead them. It is far from limited to theologies and gods.

Gods come in many symbolic forms that are equally fictitious. Most often they fall into categories called 'isms' or prefabricated thought systems with a common 'price of admission'. Surrender (or have stolen from you from birth) native abilities and agency to reason for one's self, to the 'ism' at the door. Abdicate your sensibilities and subordinate your way of living; ordering your beliefs from doctrinal menus presented.
Many menus offer only one item; what is being served-up that day.

Once mentally 'consumed' the fantastic fare is gradually internalized and as the saying goes 'you are what you eat', so goes the principle of you are what you believe in psychic terms. Soon, it becomes more than an identity with a thought system. One actually experiences their own creaturehood AS COMPRISED of the acquired system. Criticism of it (as in Stockholm Syndrome) is felt personally as criticism of the one captivated by the system. It causes identity offense and a sense of fear in what is usually already fear-based dogma.

I'll paraphrase an old clinical finding in a principle form: The further a thought system is from reality, the more intolerance and cruelty are required to maintain it. This goes double when 'members' of TWO or more systems antithetical to one another clash. It answers part of the question on everyone's lips about why the world has become so polarized and seemingly crazy.

Because technically, it is.

How about first you tell me why as a Christian are you embracing a pagan holiday. Do you actually know anything at all about Christmas or do you sit in your pew like a good boy and just believe what you’re told?

Well, thank you for asking. The snide way you ask makes you seemingly come off as a troll, but it doesn't matter if you are or not, the answer is the same.

Family and friends are just that, they are family and friends. Religion, despite it's numerous atrocities has woven it's way into traditions.
Most secular people celebrate life with the ones they love and care about in the same manner religious people do. They enjoy time with these people because they recognize they have only one life to live. They wish to love it with love, not hate.

Just like many of the people who pretend to be religious, they go through the motions of the religious overtones even though they know how ridiculous they are. This, just to spend quality time with the ones they love.

So tell us sir, if you are a man of God, how did God impregnate a virgin? How did he plant a sperm cell in a virgin vagina? Does he whip up a sperm cell out of nothing, or does he use his own? Is this blessed holiday based on a god giving the virgin Mary a good fucking while she was sleeping?

Shouldn't the question be more like, "Tell me Christians, since you believe in Christ, isn't Christ the bastard child of a perverted god?"

I think it's a great time to spend with family and friends. All holidays are a great time to remember to take the time to show the people you love how important and they are.

When I was a child it was by far the best time of the year .But now unfortunately as a non believer all it It means to me is over crowded stores and parking lots, spending money ,meaningless exchanging of unwanted presents that get passed on from one unappreciative individual to another and getting harassed by people Jingling those annoying bells soliciting for money as you enter the supermarket .

I lived six years in Japan and they are not Christians but Buddhist and Shinto but they have the same decorations, the Santa, the garlands and lights, the commercials,the shopping, the atmosphere. It's a happy holiday, the paraphernalia, the food, the presents. It's definitely not a religious festivity. I certainly love Saturnalia and what the Media and Marketing have done with it. I enjoy every chance for celebration and happiness.

This time has several celebrations by numerous tribes. One can take their pick and go with what they like.