Thread: What do Atheists do on Christmas?

I celebrate christmas so that people will give me presents and good food.






And love

Originally Posted by Kushna Mufeed

Christmas isn't a religious holiday. It's a shameless display of consumerism and a chance to lie to your kids.

hahah, best reply so far

to the original post, that's an extremely narrow-minded way of thinking. not that I'm offended (because I'm Christian too) but the answer is right in front of you, just look around at who celebrates it...everybody!!!

besides, Christmas in America generally does not recognize the Christian roots of it. Instead, it circles around Santa Claus, presents, snow, carols, shopping, etc....and there's nothing wrong with that.

Rearrange S A N T A

and you get S A T A N

?

Originally Posted by Kushna Mufeed

Christmas isn't a religious holiday. It's a shameless display of consumerism and a chance to lie to your kids.

Originally Posted by hungrymanz

Christmas is a day to celebrate capitalism and the creed of excessive commercialism and consumerism.

lol makes sense, he turned Christmas () into that thing

And look

Christmas has 666 letters in it

Coincidence? You decide

Does the whole "Happy Holidays" thing annoy anyone else? I mean, I don't give a crap if the name Christ is in Christmas; Jesus was/still is an influential figure in history. I don't mind celebrating a holiday with his name in it, it doesn't mean I have to believe he was the son of god.

Kind of like if we had a holiday celebrating Buddhas birth, I would feel the same way.

Besides, like everyone else has said, Christmas stopped being a Christian holiday a long time ago.

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the population reference bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming there is at least one good child in each. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with,thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000 th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stocking, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get onto the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second--3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.

The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized LEGO set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousands tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer can pull 10 times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them---Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).

600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would adsorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.

Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s.in .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,000 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

But Santa can time travel.

Originally Posted by Jeff777

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the population reference bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming there is at least one good child in each. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with,thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000 th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stocking, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get onto the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second--3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.

The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized LEGO set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousands tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer can pull 10 times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them---Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).

600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would adsorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.

Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s.in .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,000 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

interesting... but you forgot to factor in the fact that he is magical...

Christmas is the Winter Solstice. Easter is the Spring equinox. All that is religious about either of them is their names and Easter is named for an anglo-saxon goddess of spring.

Originally Posted by aorozco

interesting... but you forgot to factor in the fact that he is magical...

Magic isn't real

We put up a tree, decorate it with whatever the hell we want, eat lots of fatty food made by my grandma, open presents, and my dad gets one of those Terry's Chocolate Oranges every year.

Then I go to the mall with my friends and wave at Santa.

That's the jist of my atheistmas.

Originally Posted by Marvo

Magic isn't real

YES IT IS!!!! IT IS I SAY!!!! *slams door*

Originally Posted by Marvo

Magic isn't real

Disappears in a blink of an eye.

That's because Santa is pagan my friend....

...oh dear.

Christmas was founded by christianity, to celebrate the birth of jesus and the peace and such.

...even more oh dear.

Never wondered why Jesus was born so close to the winter solstice?

Of course atheists celebrate Christmas. Is Santa in the Bible?

Whether or not you see it as a celebration of capitalism is a matter of perspective. For me it isn't at all, it's just nice to celebrate something once in a while and decorate the house and see family and friends and things. I see quite a few people who are really sucked into it all though, the commercialism aspect... you probably know the kind of person I mean. There's quite a few of them in Britain now. They watch the X-Factor and buy beauty magazines.

Coca-cola should sue the world for stealing the popular image of santa.

Originally Posted by Kushna Mufeed

Coca-cola should sue the world for stealing the popular image of santa.

You should brush up on copyright law. Santa became public domain like 50 years ago.

And Coca Cola didn't actually make the first Santa or come up with the red Santa image... just an urban myth.

Ah...well...my bad.

But where did you hear that the red Santa image being created by Coca Cola is an urban myth?

Originally Posted by aorozco

interesting... but you forgot to factor in the fact that he is magical...

Oh yes how clumsy of me...let's factor in that bit of logic...

p.s. folks, it's an article taken from an anti santa website.

But where did you hear that the red Santa image being created by Coca Cola is an urban myth?

Just something I know... Wikipedia says the classic image was made by Thomas Nast in the mid 19th century.

Just something you know...

Your credentials impress me.

Look it up if you really care. If I asked you who told you what 2+2 makes I think you'd be a bit lacking too. You still know it.

Does anyone know if they still make the vanillha flavour cola?

Originally Posted by Dreamhope11

Does anyone know if they still make the vanillha flavour cola?

They do. Along with cherry, raspberry, shit flavored and butterscotch as well.