Werner Herzog Reads Twas The Night Before Christmas

Existential thirst is the engine that drives the holiday machine...

A Holiday Message from Ricky Gervais: Why I'm An Atheist - Speakeasy - WSJ

More than worthwhile to read the whole thing.

So what does the question “Why don’t you believe in God?” really mean. I think when someone asks that they are really questioning their own belief. In a way they are asking “what makes you so special? “How come you weren’t brainwashed with the rest of us?” “How dare you say I’m a fool and I’m not going to heaven, f— you!” Let’s be honest, if one person believed in God he would be considered pretty strange. But because it’s a very popular view it’s accepted. And why is it such a popular view? That’s obvious. It’s an attractive proposition. Believe in me and live forever. Again if it was just a case of spirituality this would be fine.

“Do unto others…” is a good rule of thumb. I live by that. Forgiveness is probably the greatest virtue there is. But that’s exactly what it is -­‐ a virtue. Not just a Christian virtue. No one owns being good. I’m good. I just don’t believe I’ll be rewarded for it in heaven. My reward is here and now. It’s knowing that I try to do the right thing. That I lived a good life. And that’s where spirituality really lost its way. When it became a stick to beat people with. “Do this or you’ll burn in hell.”

You won’t burn in hell. But be nice anyway.

Beyond Billboards - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Andrew doesn't seem to know what a myth is:

The Christmas stories in the Bible - and they are multiple and contradictory - are obviously myths. They are obviously not to be taken literally. They are meant as signs to the deeper, profounder truth that Christians hold to: that the force behind all that exists actually intervened in the consciousness of humankind in the form of a man so saturated in godliness that merely being near him healed people of the weight of the world's sins.

If stories are not meant to be taken literally, then why take them so literally?

The real point is that a myth is not a falsehood taken for truth. It is an imaginative leap into the inner world of human experience.

Myths are the first human attempts at understanding human psychology: our haunted, wounded, despairing, doubting selves made better through storytelling. Myths are neither true nor false, reasonable or unreasonable, they are what make facts meaningful and understanding possible.

Secular Christmas

The truth about Christmas:

In short, everything WE secularists value in Christmas has been entirely appropriated by the Christian world.