Religious Holidays

Back in the days of old, man had a lot more time to sit around and think about things. They thought about the sky, they thought about how water flowed downhill, and they thought about their gods. It’s a known fact to atheists that religions are nothing more than the product of the human mind, and Satanism (as codified by Anton LaVey) embraces this truth as well.


I’ve been reading quite a bit (coincidentally, it’s been a cluster) of opinion pieces recently about the concept of flocks. The men who designed Christianity were very clever people – and of course, clever and smart may not mean the same thing, but they were clever enough to get many folks to believe their lie even when it didn’t make any sense (incredibly clever)! Successfully controlling something demands that one takes into account “the balance.” In the aim to design a religion that will entrance a horde of the average to perform to your whim, you need to allow there to be enough conflict and celebration to keep them occupied enough to never question what could be outside of the four fences of their pens.

Conflict is easy to identify. Internal hatred of one another and disdain for sister-religions is clear as day to anyone who isn’t a carrier of the virus that is organized religion. Celebration is also easy to identify: religious holidays. They give folks a reason to come together at certain points of the year and take a break from their strict regimen of venerating their god and failing to be perfect in their eyes (a mechanism which perpetuates the perfection of their deity/deities as well as stratifies their average minds to a lowly state beneath that deity/those deities) when they designate a holiday. Let me be specific here. The top three services holidays provide to a religion as a whole are:

1. Gives people an excuse to come back to their natural state, so that they can be knocked onto their knees again later – a fall and rise cycle which exhausts the practitioners and keeps them too distracted to break free from their psychological bondage
2. Provide a progressive reinforcement of the designed fantasy by normalizing the idea of a specific ‘event’ (eg: Easter, Christmas, Hanukkah) to the point where it doesn't occur to the flock to question the cause for the event – which perpetuates the lie
3. Monkey see, monkey do: by encouraging group participation, practitioners hold themselves in check to their faith without even questioning the validity of the ritualistic practices. The more participants, the stronger the herd mentality and the more challenging it is to speak out or question. This isn't a cowardly trait: it's rooted in our coding.
   
   

These traits, though I’m focusing here on religious perspectives, can also be applied to secular holidays when you consider the values of nationalism, cultural pride and economic stimulus
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Satanism doesn’t have required holidays.

After reviewing the above it sort of makes sense, doesn’t it? So much of our religion is about just about mocking others, but that doesn’t mean that we get down on our knees and pray. It doesn’t mean that we go to Easter church service with pink daffodils to hand to our neighbor in a symbol of brotherly love. (Granted, maybe some do if they like pink daffodils but they’re not going to worship Yahweh or Jehovah.) Requiring veneration of a god that doesn’t exist (Satan) is no different than any of the Abrahamic of Pagan traditions and it's a massive waste of energy and time. We Satanists choose the days we want to spend in celebration on a daily basis without the need to wait for a specific calendar date to indulge in the life of the world. We may choose to celebrate the equinox or the solstice. We may choose to celebrate the peace and internal warmth gleaned from our loved ones’ company, but in the end what matters most is that we chose.


There is one exception to what I’ve mentioned, and I believe that most Satanists probably do celebrate this particular holiday because there may not exist a deity in this religion, but as you would be aware (having read the Satanic Bible), there are gods: ourselves! We celebrate major events in our lives, the most meaningful on a broad scale being the date we were born. Another may be the day we get married (if we choose to do so), the day our loved ones pass, or any other important event (the day we ceased a detrimental habit such as drinking, drugs, or whathaveyou…). There are 365 days on the calendar that a Satanist can choose to mark a day for celebration, and each may mark it differently.


That said...
There’s an important holiday coming up for me next week (my birthday!), and my way of celebrating is quite understated on the surface-level but is going to be wonderfully blissful to me day-of. I’ll spend it with my fiancée, my favorite person in the world, and chances are I’ll spend it sleeping in and being lazy. She’s going to bake me gluten-free brownies and we’ll decorate it with my favorite icing because I really… I love icing nearly as much as I love milk-chocolate. Gifts aren’t on my radar – I’m not really a gift person. I’d rather go outside and watch the rain drop off the leaves and spend the day wandering around the internet since it fits so well in my palm. To others this probably sounds pretty boring, but it’s going to be perfect for me. I don’t like loud parties. I’ll probably drink my favorite mixers (homemade recipes) with a splash of vodka since I really don’t drink any other time of the year.


It’s going to be a grand time. So, celebrate with me this week if you’d like – just don’t crash my party or I’ll probably throw you out.


Ave Satanas!

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