Party on! Non-Christians don't Scrooge on Christmas fun

• Followers of other faiths and atheists, too, celebrate with trees, gifts, lights and more
• Seven in 10 non-Christians will give Christmas gifts and share Christmas dinner
• Most will put up a tree and decorate their home and some even go to church

This week was a Christmas-for-all celebration, and you need not be Christian to party.

Many atheists, Hindus, Jews and Muslims joined in the December fun like pop culture tourists. They feasted, they partied and they piled gifts under Christmas trees. After all, why Scrooge on joy?

It's not that other religions lack for fun winter holy days of their own. By Christmas Eve, Jews had wrapped up eight nights of Hanukkah candle-lighting and Hindus enjoyed their Diwali lanterns in November -- both festivals of light and goodness triumphing over evil. Muslims feasted for the Eid Al-Adha in October, celebrating the patriarch Abraham's devotion to God's commands.

And Every Day is an Atheist Holiday, boasts the latest book title from Vegas magician Penn Jillette, an outspoken unbeliever. But if his young children asked for a tree again this year, by golly (not by God) they'd get one, he says.

Jill Lightner and Tom Marshall, an atheist couple in Seattle, will deck their halls, hang a hot pink plaster angel atop their ornament-laden tree, top the statues by their doorway with Santa hats, and give homemade Advent calendars to neighboring kids.

Suhag Shukla, executive director of the Hindu American Foundation, hung a hand-made foam elephant, representing Ganesha, the Hindu lord of wisdom and new beginnings, on a Christmas tree in her family's Philadelphia home.

Sandy Silva, who is Jewish, lit the Hanukkah menorah at her Kansas City home. But when her new puppy made a holiday visit to St. Louis, it would have a red Christmas sweater if the weather turned chilly.

"I'm very much into the beauty and sparkling lights of a commercial Christmas season," says Silva. To her it signifies "a belief shared by both religions that hope can burn in every heart to sustain us."

About 27% of Americans do not identify with any Christian tradition. While some follow Judaism, Hinduism, Islam or other faiths or philosophies, nearly 20%, believe "nothing in particular," according to 2012 research from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

That's no bar to partying, according to a survey of December celebrations by LifeWay Research, a Nashville,Tenn., evangelical research agency. Among people with no Christian identity, they found:

-- 74% give Christmas gifts to family or friends.

-- 72% gather for a Christmas dinner with loved ones

-- 62% put up a Christmas tree

-- 56% decorate their home

-- 23% encourage belief in Santa

Some even get close to the Christ-centered heart of Christmas: 11% attend a Christmas Eve or Christmas Day worship service and 9% say they encourage belief in Jesus Christ as savior. This may be because about 11% of non-Christians told LifeWay they were wed to a Christian.

LifeWay Research director Scott McConnell has a theory about the 8% on non-Christians who say they buy Advent calendars to count down the days to the birth of Jesus. When he looked at Advent calendars on Amazon, he found "only one has a nativity on it. (There are) lots of Santa, toys, and chocolate. Who wouldn't like that?"

Every year nearly 80% of U.S. households put up a tree, according to polls commissioned by the National Christmas Tree Association. But among those who do not, only 7% cited religious reasons for skipping it. When they were asked why, most said they were traveling, too busy, no longer entertaining tots at home, or simply not in the mood for an evergreen. .

Jillette, whose book excoriates organized religion and touts invented dates such as "Chiquita Banana Wednesday," and Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland invention of the "unbirthday," is in the mood for whatever his children, ages six and seven, will enjoy.

If that means a big evergreen from a Christmas tree lot, well, okay. They had a tree last year, loaded with colorful ornaments. He says, "It was just like getting a pumpkin for Halloween -- secular fun. I'm not overly sensitive to it. It's not a third rail issue for me. If the kids want to check out a church some day, I'm okay with that, too, I like to be as inclusive as possible," says Jillette.

He'll be on stage with the Penn & Teller show both Christmas Eve and Christmas day before taking off for New Years. January 1 is Jillette's preferred party day "because the calendar turns over and you start fresh." They launch balloons to remember loved ones who have died, feast and shower the children in gifts. "We have already had a week to see what gifts were the most successful with their Christian and Jewish friends and then we can just swoop in and go over the top with the best."

Gifts are often the allure of Christmas-for-all spirit. There are no religious bounds on generosity.

Hadeel Masseoud, a Muslim mom writing for a Disney-sponsored parenting site, points out that, while, Muslims exchange gifts during their two major holidays, both known as Eid, they also respect Jesus as a prophet of God so celebrating his birth with a few more gifts "is not technically against any Islamic principles."

Decorations get a Muslim twist: On line companies offer dozens of Muslim ornaments including one that proclaims "Peace be upon you" in Arabic calligraphy.

Suhag Shukla grew up with her extended Hindu family putting up lights and giving the traditional gifts of candy, jewelry and new clothing for Dwali -- then leaving the lights up through January.

On Christmas, under the family's tree (always an artificial one, she says, "because Hinduism teaches respect for the earth) her dad or an uncle dressed as Santa Claus to distribute "Secret Santa" gifts among all the cousins.

Shukla still has the hand-me-down suit, too big for her teenage sons. While her boys got their gifts at Diwali, she says, come Christmas, they will get one or two small gifts more.

"Hinduism is a pluralistic tradition. There is a quiet confidence in knowing you can partake in celebrations with others without sacrificing your own belief that there are multiple paths to understanding the Divine," Shukla says.

To Jill Lightner, understanding the divine is "irrelevant any day of the year" but she still devotes most of December to sharing great food and giving to friends, neighbors and charities.

The couple enjoys hanging "crazy lights everywhere" and putting up stockings, a tree loaded with ornaments topped with a star, and a Filipino parol lantern glowing over the front door. To the faithful, a parol represents the star of Bethlehem, "but we love it for its twinkling awesomeness," she says.

Ahem. That's not just awesomeness, says Pope Benedict XVI. On Friday, when the Christmas tree for St. Peter's Square was set up, he said its lights symbolize and recall, "God became man and came among us to dispel the shadows of sin, bringing His divine light to humanity."

Not everyone sees the light that way, says atheist Robert Crenshaw,a corporate training consultant and a rock band drummer. He put out an Atheist Christmas CD featuring his own compositions, liner notes that intone solemnly about the significance of the cycles of the year in nature and a photo of him as a happy tot on Santa's knee.

"You don't have to think there's a God in the sky to love Christmas. It's okay not to buy into the literal Christian meaning of the holiday," says Crenshaw, of Oak Park, Mich.

But "Christmas-for-all," minus Christ, is a problem to those who take a serious stand on the theology of the holy day such as Rev. Michael Horton, professor at Westminster Seminary in Escondido, Calif., and host of The White Horse Inn, a radio talk show on evangelical theology theology.

The gigantic American Christmas has trivialized the birth of a savior into cultural superficiality for all, a philosophy that is "as innocuous as possible, he says.

"When Jews or agnostics or atheists want to celebrate a winter event, that makes perfect sense. But if Christmas has come to mean something even atheists can celebrate, if it is so far removed from the birth of Christ that it no longer has a serious religious meaning," Horton says, "that's not respect for Christmas, that's assimilation."

Carin Agiman,

who calls herself a non-observant Jew, assimilated one totally secular Christmas-season tradition --the ugly sweater party.

Agiman, a Berkeley, Calif., based entrepreneur, created a company, Geltfiend, to sell sweaters decorated with the spinning top and menorah -- essentials of Hanukkah -- and one of a snowman dressed as a Hassidic Jew with a black hat and side curls. "Jews get cold, too!" she says.