Probably nothing. But they'll participate anyway, just for the presents.

That's the one day out of the year where many atheists actively participate in worship, however insincere it may be.

I’m an atheist and I love Christmas...its a great time to get together with all the family, express how we feel about each other and exchange gifts. The traditional celebrations of December 25th have nothing to do with Christianity anyway and are traditionally just part of the winter solstice mixed with ancient mythology. A good excuse to spend time with your loved ones me thinks... Christians simply stole the celebration in the first place so its about time we had it back..

well .. do you mean atheists ,,, or just non christian.? because you know ... christmas was stolen by the christians , from the pagans . it is a pagan holiday ..the church invented a holiday to put ontop of it and overshadow it . like every other pagan holiday stolen from the pagans.. try and find christmas in the bible ,,, you wont ,, try and find even a reference to jesus's birthday .. you will not . it is a pagan holiday called "yule" ,,or the winter solstice there is not, and never was anything christian about it . witches , pagans and wiccans etc .. will be celebrating this day . wiccans and pagans honor the nature deities ,,, hence not really atheists .. but not all witchs honor a deitie so .. some could be called atheists . .... so the question should be .... """what should YOU be doing on yule ,,, a pagan holiday """?

I love Christmas!! I love Christmas trees and Christmas lights, both putting them up and appreciating the ones that my neighbors hang. I love walking downtown and seeing the lights there and the department store windows. I love wreaths and greenery in the dead of winter. I love eggnog (with and without alcohol). I love Christmas cookies and chocolate, and Christmas dinner. I love when it snows on Christmas and everything looks so pretty. I love burning a Yule log. I love Christmas music and how suddenly there is live music everywhere, on street corners and in shopping centers, playing instruments like French Horns or singing in choirs. I love how charities will come out in the cold and ring bells to ask for donations for the less fortunate, and that people will actually give them money because it's the holiday season. I love movies like "A Christmas Story" and "Miracle on 34th Street" and "Christmas Vacation" and "Elf". I love the whole lineup of Hannukah and Kwanza and Christmas and New Years and marking the end of another year. I love picking out special gifts for my loved ones and hiding them around the house and keeping them secret. I love that people go out of their way to be friendly to each other and to give best wishes instead of ignoring each other the way we usually do. I even love Santa Claus and convincing children that the world is safe and magic is real and everyone loves them and wants to give them presents. Basically all the pagan and secular aspects, I love, and I respect the religious rituals of the various Jewish/Christian/Rastafarian/Pagan people I know, because a lot of those rituals are beautiful and pleasant and meaningful. I am slightly annoyed when certain religious persons try to claim the holiday entirely for themselves, when it originated long before the Abrahamic religions and is today mostly secular. But whatever, I'll let them stress out about it and just enjoy my annual pecan pie. Happy Holidays! :D

Lookin' forward to it. I love Christmas. A break from work, time with the family, a chance to do some shopping and get gifts for the nieces, the festive atmosphere, the decorations and lights and so on. It's a grand thing - with traditions from before christianity as well as the christian ones. Like 'em.

A little bit intimidated.

I suppose we all feel differently about it. I feel that it's all about consumerism, it's a trick to scam us into buying huge gifts in an effort to prove we love our family.

I loved it as a child since it was one time my family got together. It wasn't anything about religion really. We celebrated the commercial part of it mostly. Since living on my own, I no longer celebrate it with my family, so its a little depressing. The good side to it is that I get time and a half when I work on it. It allows other co-workers to be with their family and children, while I make more money. Its a win-win.

Christmas is just the sloppy prostitute of a holiday that various "powers that be" have taken from each other through time and used to get lots of people to do something. Right now, it's just used to get people to buy stuff and put themselves back in debt for the rest of the year (or further into debt). Not only that, but they keep dragging it out longer and longer each year to get you to spend more and more money. Two days after Halloween this year I was in a Target and they already had christmas decorations up and were selling all sorts of crap related to it. I think one of the most overlooked costs of the "holiday season" is that spent on travel. If you love your family so much, why don't you ever visit any other time of the year? Why do you feel compelled to see them only during christmas? I don't need some excuse to go see my family if I want, and I'm not going to buy into some artificial cultural pressure to make me drop $4-600 for a plane ticket to see my family in a season when I can barely pay my own heating bills. Only to go and sit inside as the weather is too cold/wet/crappy to do anything outdoors and just do NOTHING with my family other then get increasingly sick of each other from proximity and remember why I moved out years ago. What a wonderful time of the year indeed. The past two years I have been suckered into spending a few weeks "back home" with my family during this season and the only way I could tolerate it after two days was by being drunk every waking moment for every single day after that. Very, very drunk, morning, noon, and night. Yes ESPECIALLY on Christmas day. Oddly enough they have been the best christmases for me in memory. Christmas is a time and money sink. Nothing special about it.

I pseudo celebrate it, because everyone else does it. Although, in my family, it is more just a get together than any sort of celebration, if I had the option, I would avoid it all together. (Not my family, but all the trapping of the holiday.)