an atheist at Christmastime

[kindkit]

It's three in the morning and I have relatives coming tomorrow. Therefore, I'm hanging around on LJ (which has been dead all day), treasuring this last little bit of time during which I'm responsible for nobody but myself. (They leave on the 28th, but until then, it's my job to make sure they have a good time

Comments

[malnpudl]

Your story sounds a lot like mine. In many ways.

But Christianity was a major factor in my childhood. My mother (for reasons best known to herself, since she's not religious at all) insisted that I go to church. I grew up with Christian stories, both in their "for children" versions and in the glorious language of the King James Bible....That immersion in rich seventeenth-century prose was, I think, one reason why I later became interested in literature.

This reminds me of a Gregory Bateson quote, which I'll have to paraphrase... something to the effect that his father, a non-believer, had required that the family read aloud from the Bible every night at the dinner table in order that his children not grow up to be ignorant and illiterate atheists. (Emphasis his.)

[lilacsigil]

I can't ever remember believing in any kind of God, despite a few years of Sunday school, on and off, but you're right: we are made of stories, and Christian stories (and Christian versions of older stories) have shaped us in ways that are hard to understand, but stir deep responses.

[julia_here]

My unchurched parents sent my sister and me to Sunday school with the next door neighbor, who was a lay reader for the Evangelical Lutheran church, mostly to get us out of the house for a while and let them be alone on the weekend; one summer that I was particularly obstreporous got me sent to every Vacation Bible School in Yelm. My Quaker grandmother got to me early with words about self-reflection and witness; the many weird fundies in town filled me with doubt about sharing their God