News Media
Like Christmas for Humanists
ENV editor, Anika Smith, has a delightful column in the SPU Falcon newspaper titled Beware of ‘Darwin Day’. In describing some of the more humorous elements of Darwin Day celebrations (carols, Darwin look-alike contests and even an incredible, edible tree of life) Smith notes the holiday’s familiar trappings.
If you’re wondering what a secular humanist does to commemorate such an occasion, it turns out that these particular humanists stand on street corners and hand out leaflets about evolution in an attempt to reach passers-by.
In Victoria, B.C., a philosophy of religion professor organized a Darwin Day celebration for his students where they decked the halls with humanist style. Participants decorated an evolution tree, exchanged Darwin cards and even sang evolution carols.
If this sounds familiar to you, that’s because it was designed that way. This celebration, like so many others, was styled as a “light-hearted satire” of Christmas. Had the celebration taken place in a culture with a different religious history, such as Turkey, it might look something more like the Feast of Sacrifice.