(Previously in Swedish on this webbsite 2018)
Christmas is important to me. The Christmas holidays, just like the holidays, are something to look forward to during the darker autumn months. And after Christmas we move towards the light. But also that we have something to gather around, something for all of us in common.
It doesn’t matter to me as an atheist why we actually celebrate Christmas. I like to go to church and listening to the Christmas gospel, but it also every time remind me why I am not a believer. I am simply not convinced that it is a Holy Spirit that has made the Virgin Mary pregnant based on the word in the Bible.
Why make it so hard to be a believer, why should I have to believe in something so absurd and something that is only confirmed by a person who claim to have received the message of their dreams? Why should we continue to believe this story in the 21st century? 2,000 years ago, this may not have seemed so strange, but today? The Bible’s stories of Jesus are full of oddities that had been told orally in many years before they finally been record with different purposes as a background. What was originally the basis for these stories is impossible to say.
My interpretation of the incident with Maria’s pregnancy is that she became pregnant in the traditional way. Perhaps she had been raped, perhaps she had fallen in love, who knows, but to get pregnant out of wedlock was unacceptable for a woman. Mary, however, managed to convince the surroundings that she had become pregnant with a Holy Spirit. She, and perhaps people around her who wanted to save her, were simply very smart and convincing and probably even managed to subsume her story into some old traditions and legends to increase her credibility. On this lie, in my view, we build the whole Christian tradition. The very birth of this illegitimate child is the reason why we celebrate our greatest holiday of the year, Christmas. This Mary must be one of the most influential people in history. I am curious and would like to know more about this woman. Unfortunately, there is very little to be found.