The Vernex-Losets: Hannah, Zak, Chloe, Leah and Philippe (Photos: Chuck B)

As Christmas gets close, Hannah and Philippe Vernex-Loset get to work prepping their Johns Creek home for its yearly holiday makeover. Plastic reindeer perch on the roof. The fresh Christmas pine covered in ornaments and lights takes center stage in the living room; stockings hang near the fireplace where the couple roasts chestnuts with their three children on Dec. 25. It looks like a typical tableau celebrating the birth of the Messiah, even though Hannah is a second-generation atheist with passionately held beliefs in the absence of an Almighty (and any of his offspring for that matter).

Raised a strictly observant Catholic in France, her husband, Philippe, after thoughtful scrutiny of religious wars and the presence of the church in discrimination and human rights issues, decided to embrace his wife’s views and press on as a non-theist.

Even though both parents are committed to their beliefs, Christmas in their home is a family-centric time celebrated with as much gusto as if a true believer were throwing the party.

It’s not an unusual feat to pull off. For many parents who grew up celebrating Christmas but who are also compelled to teach their children to be critical of organized religion, it’s a natural evolution to borrow and bask in a Christmas with all the sentimental trimmings, and none of the holy ones.

Christmas, not by The Good Book

Raised Christian, Dale McGowan of Alpharetta is an eloquent champion of secular humanism, a belief that morality, community and science can yield similar fulfillment as religion, without God in the driver’s seat. He’s an educator, parenting blogger and author of Raising Free Thinkers and Parenting Beyond Belief. As a dad, he’s traded and borrowed traditions from his Christian background and doesn’t really sweat the fact that he and his family enjoy a holiday that looks just like everyone else’s on the block, even though they reject the biblical dogma behind it.

The McGowans (clockwise): Dale, Connor, Becca, Delaney and Erin 

“When people look at our house, they see Christmas. They don’t see a secular humanist winter solstice. There’s no reason for us to try so hard to make ourselves different than everyone else.

“I think the holidays are less difficult than non-religious parents might think,” he says. “Parenthood does force you to think about what you’re actually passing on, about your values and your way of seeing the world. But the fact is most people celebrate a secular Christmas, which is what religious Christians bemoan. They work hard to try to get Jesus into the holiday and they work hard to get their kids to remember that it’s about Jesus.”

For other families with like-minded skepticism but who still strive for religion to play a symbolic, less directly spiritual role in their children’s lives, like Barrie and Rich Herman of Decatur, Christmas can take on an individualized family branding. Barrie was raised Jewish (she also celebrated Christmas as a child); Rich was brought up Catholic. When their son, Xander, was born five years ago, Barrie wanted him to be raised Jewish, which includes a path through Hebrew school, a bar mitzvah and temple as often as they can manage to go, even though Rich didn’t convert.

“I was completely fine with Xander being raised Jewish because I don’t particularly agree with the Catholic Church, or any Christian church for that matter,” Rich says. “It was the whole exclusive-club mentality, that idea that you’re either with us or against us that left a bad taste in my mouth.”

Both Barrie and Rich, however, agreed that along with Hanukkah, Xander will celebrate Christmas. In lieu of green and red, their house is decked out in a blue, white and silver color scheme during the holidays. The tree is covered in non-Christian ornaments, like menorahs and Mickey Mouse dreidels. The rest are mementos that reflect their lives, like an ornament from the Cayman Islands, where the couple got engaged, and some trimmings are adorned with pictures of their dogs.

Barrie and Rich Herman with their son, Xander

As for the religious talk this time of the year, the Hermans are trying to keep it simple while prepping for some of the Big Picture questions that would be just around the corner in any mixed-religion home. “For a while, it’s been all about the celebrations, but we’re just starting to get into what everything means,” Barrie says. “I know someday soon he’s going to ask me why all his friends go to church while he goes to temple and celebrates Christmas. He asks really smart questions, so we know it’s coming. I really don’t know what I’m going to say.”

Teachable moments

When the Vernex-Losets moved to Georgia from Paris 10 years ago, they had to adjust to a drastic social climate shift from religiously tolerant to red state. Hannah has made a firm stand defending atheism. When asked where she goes to church, her typical answer 10 years ago was, “We don’t go to church because we don’t believe in God.”

She’s shortened that sentence over the years but says it’s important to demonstrate confidence in her convictions no matter how socially awkward it may be in the South. “You cannot look like a hypocrite in front of a teenager or they’ll tear you apart,” she says. “But it takes a lot of guts to say, ‘I don’t believe in God’ to some people.”

The couple agrees that their children should learn as much as possible about all religions and has sent them to Jewish friends’ houses for Hanukkah and Passover and to Christian church services and camps, even though they choose not to accompany them on these religious-discovery excursions. The goal is for the children to one day decide for themselves what, if any, religion they might grow into. But they also use their traditional Christmas observance as a time to accentuate their own purpose as atheists.

“The holidays are the perfect time to open our kids’ minds to religion and let them know why we don’t do these kinds of things the rest of the year,” Philippe says. “Some religious people think that just because we don’t believe in God that we are barbarians. To me, I respect human rights and the Ten Commandments. We all have to respect these rules to live in a community and be positive and productive. But what we are saying to our kids is we don’t need to have a superior being or life after death to motivate us to be right and kind people.”

For McGowan’s family, Christmas is the time for teaching ancient seasonal rhythms and showing how similar they are to religious expressions. “What I have done with my kids is I go back to the roots of what the holidays have always been about, and I mean before we became religious.

“There was always a winter festival. There was always a time when the days got shorter and the nights got longer and the air got colder. I tell my kids that we’re putting up these colorful decorations to combat that darkness and bring out the light. We think about ways we can be generous to each other and see people we don’t see the rest of the year and have great meals.

“It’s much more related to that original feeling of fellowship and celebration. I think the religious expression of this same idea is a lovely way to do it. But it’s only one way.

“Once parents recognize that this is what we’re all doing in November and December, they can just say, great, I can just let myself do that. I can let my family engage in that feeling of generosity of spirit and fellowship without worrying that it’s Religion Light.”

Sure, Virginia, why not?

Establishing a safe and believable world view for kids — from toddler to teenager — that includes reliable and comforting family traditions without busting a hole in a parent’s world view is a lot to ask. Yet it seems to come easy to some. Take Santa Claus. You might think families who put a great deal of effort into nudging their kids to start thinking like enlightenment philosophers at tender ages might not be so keen on telling them a large man will be flying around the world with gifts he delivers via the chimney, but many have no qualms selling this fable.

For McGowan, the Santa story is the ideal preparation or “ultimate dry run,” as he calls it in his book Parenting Beyond Belief, to lay the groundwork for a critical debate about God and for parents to establish themselves as a healthy presence in their lifelong relationship with their children.

He introduced Santa to his children as part of the whole Christmas celebration, told them the story, and waited, for many years, for their inborn and inevitable “Kringledoubt,” as he calls it, to surface.

“How does Santa get to all those houses in one night? How does he get in when we don’t have a chimney and all the windows are locked and the alarm system is on? Why does he use the same wrapping paper as Mom?” McGowan writes of his kids’ questions.

Without confirming or denying, he responded to these queries by first allowing his children to enjoy the mystery of it all, but then as they got older to slowly nudge them to figure it out for themselves. Responses started with, “Some people say the sleigh is magic. Does that sound right to you?” To his young children, it did.

Then when his oldest son, at an older age, asked again if Santa was real, McGowan asked what he thought. He replied, “I think all the moms and dads are Santa. Am I right?” McGowan confirmed his son’s suspicion and says that this type of experience shows children that their parents are a source of truth, rather than authoritative naysayers in one extreme, fairy-tale-enablers in the other.

To other families, even though he’s one other myth on a long list that will one day be debunked, Santa’s an all right guy, so why not let him be part of the celebration? “I don’t have a problem with Xander believing that there’s a Santa Claus,” says Rich Herman. “Behind it is the principle of being selfless and giving and charitable, so if you have to call that Santa Claus, that’s fine. The Easter Bunny? Yeah. That’s another story.”