by Akim Reinhardt
I have never been Christian. Christianity then is at once very familiar and rather foreign to me, rather distant yet omnipresent. Although I’m now atheistic, I was raised Jewish and have a reasonable understanding of Christianity ‘s founding document: the Hebrew Bible. As a Historian who has periodically had to grapple with the role of religion, especially Christianity, in the European, colonial, U.S., and Indigenous pasts, I have a sense of how the religion has changed and been used over time. But mostly, as someone who has lived his whole life in a large nation thoroughly dominated by Christians, who has some Christian family, and who has been in relationships with women who were raised Christian even if they no longer practiced it, I am very used to the annual rhythms and rituals of Christianity, as well as the public stances and goals of various Christians.
This time of year tends to bring out the best, and occasionally the worst, in American Christians. While the materialistic orgy is a bit dismaying, it does not generally concern me. However, the emphasis on good will and generosity can genuinely warm American society. Indeed, even a lot of the ass holes start behaving a little better. Yet at the same time, there is always a small quotient of people, for whom genuine happiness seems to be forever elusive, and they will invariably begin whining about a supposed War on Christmas. Even during this festive season, in this very Christian country, that old Christian persecution complex never really goes away.
They’re not entirely wrong, you know. But boy are they not right. Christ has, to a large degree, been taken out of Christmas in the United States. But what some are apt to see as a sinister Liberal plot to de-Christianize Christmas is actually the largely passive secularization of Christmas that has been ongoing for at least a century in the U.S. The whole Santa Claus schtick and even Christmas sales at stores, date all the way back to the mid-19th century. The New York City department stores Macy’s and Gimbel’s came up with the odious Black Friday in the 1920s. It’s not a sinister conspiracy, and certainly not the doing of non-Christians. It’s just millions of people, most of them Christian, actually, embracing aspects of the Christmas holiday they enjoy (getting and giving gifts, putting up and decorating a tree, eating big family meals, watching football, not going to work, etc.) and forsaking overtly religious aspects of the holiday by not going to church and generally not giving too much thought to the birth of Jesus.
Yes, Christmas has secularized to an amazing degree, first here in the United States, and increasingly, because of America’s vast pop culture influence, around the world. Simlar to how the American-style wedding has also become a prominent part of many cultures around the globe. When you’re the wealthiest empire in the history of the world, and invent blue jeans, Hollywood movies, and modern pop music, you end up with a lot of copycats. Read more »
Art is dangerous. It’s time people remembered that and recognized the fullness of it. For if art is to remain important or even relevant in the current moment, then it’s long past time artists stopped flashing dull claws and pretending they had what it takes to slice through ignorance. We need them swallow their feel-good clichés and to begin sharpening their blades. We need dangerous art, and we cannot afford much more art that its creators believe is dangerous when it is not.
Last spring, American documentary film maker Ken Burns gave a commencement address at Brandeis University in Boston. Burns is a talented speaker, adept at spinning uplifting yarns, and 
Are you savvy?
Some people use religion to get their life together. Good for them. I’m all for it. Although I myself am an atheist, I don’t think it much matters how someone gets their life together so long as they do.
Historians have spilled much ink analyzing and interpreting all of the U.S. presidential elections, dating back to George Washington’s first go in 1788. But a handful of contests get more attention than others. Some elections, besides being important for all the usual reasons, also provide insights into their eras’ zeitgeist, and proved to be tremendously influential far beyond the four years they were intended to frame.
There are only four U.S. states where white people are 
The turn of the 21st century saw a burst of atheistic declarations and critiques in the United States and Great Britain, led by a small group of celebrity atheists including Philosopher Daniel Dennett, Biologist Richard Dawkins, and journalist Christopher Hitchens. I have always found this New Atheism, as the movement is often called, to be a mixed bag. It was long overdue, and many good (if obvious) points were made. However, there was also a fair bit of navel-gazing and even stupidity. And among some of the celebrity leaders, I believe, there was also a profound misunderstanding of religion, how it functions, and even its basic purposes.
Two spaces after a period, not one. If a topic sentence leading to a paragraph can get a whole new line and an indentation, then other new sentences can get an extra space. Don’t smush sentences together like puppies in a cardboard box at a WalMart parking lot. Let them breathe. Show them some affection. Teach them to shit outside.
The barbarians have won.
A little over a year ago I published 
What do we know about vampires?
I teach at a large, public university in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. For about a decade now, the upper administration has had a habit of sending “comforting” emails whenever there’s a major school shooting. Of course there are far too many school shootings in America to send a note for each one, so I suppose the administration tries to keep it “relevant,” for lack of a better word. These heartfelt missives arrive in my Inbox once or twice a year, typically after some lunatic shoots up a college campus. So far as I can tell, they go to everyone. To every faculty member, staff member, and student on campus. To 25,000 people or more.
I am sitting on the couch of our discontent. The Robot Overlords™ are circling. Shall we fight them, as would a sassy little girl and her aging, unshaven action star caretaker in the Hollywood rendition of our feel good dystopian future? Shall we clamp our hands over our ears, shut our eyes, and yell “Nah! Nah! Nah! Nah! Nah!”? Shall we bow down and let the late stage digital revolution wash over us, quietly and obediently resigning ourselves to all that comes next, whether or not includes us?
You don’t have to fuck me. Or give me any money. You don’t have to shave your head or adopt a peculiar diet or wear an ugly smock or come live in my compound among fellow cult members. You don’t even have to believe in anything.
I can’t sing. Or so I always thought. A notorious karaoke warbler, I would sometimes pick a country tune, preferably Hank Williams, so that when my voice cracked, I could pretend I was yodeling. Then one night, I stepped up to the bar’s microphone and sang a Gordon Lightfoot song.