My atheist Christmas: How I overcame my personal struggle with the holiday

Only recently have I come to accept Christmas as a secular holiday. Because of my religious awakening in high school and the subsequent falling out I had with God in college, its symbols and stories were too freighted with meaning for me just to enjoy the pretty colors.

But I used to be a true believer. My parents made sure all five of their children were baptized and went to catechism until they had their first communion, which among Catholics is the first time a child receives the body of Christ in the form of unleavened bread and His blood in the form of wine.

For those who may not know, Catholics (like I was) are taught that, when consecrated by a priest, a thin piece of bread that looks like a Vanilla Wafer that’s been left out in the sun and tastes like glue smells is the body of the messiah.

For some reason, this doctrine of “transubstantiation” was always the most difficult for me to accept — even during my conservative Catholic phase, which lasted from my sophomore year of high school until my second year of college. Perhaps it shouldn’t have been so hard, given the other things I thought at the time. If you believe in the virgin birth of Christ, the miracles He performed — see, my feelings toward religion are so ambivalent I questioned whether capitalizing “He” would constitute a betrayal of my values — that a man rose from the dead after three days and then ascended to heaven, it shouldn’t have been such a stretch.