Awe of Christmas
It’s the Christmas season, and that means I’m looking forward to going to church. On its own, that might not sound too surprising: Half of Americans plan to do the same this holiday season. But in my case, it might seem a little strange. While I still know all the prayers and when to sit and stand, from my days as an altar boy, I left my faith and churchgoing behind long ago. As a scientist, I wouldn’t be hubristic enough to claim that God doesn’t exist; that’s a question science can’t definitively answer. But neither can I find any objective evidence for God’s fingerprints in this world. So for me, church has lost its luster—except, that is, at Christmas.
When late December rolls around, I want to go to church, even though I don’t believe in much of the creed. And if recent surveys about Americans’ holiday plans are accurate, I’m not alone. Many people who don’t set foot in a church through most of the year show up at Yuletide, including 10% of nonbelieving atheists and agnostics. Why? That’s a question to which I think I’ve finally found an answer.
The Christmas mass isn’t just an entertaining thing to do, like going to see Radio City’s Christmas Spectacular. Nor is it a simple reminder of cherished family holiday traditions. For me, and I suspect many others, going to church at Christmas offers a different kind of experience, one that’s spiritual if not religious.
That might sound like an oxymoron, but in practice it’s not. Following a religion means embracing a theology and often an institution. There’s a set of beliefs laying out what God is and what God wants, and also a list of rules to follow. Spirituality, on the other hand, tends to be more experiential than cerebral. It’s a sense that there is a sacredness to life, something ineffable but not necessarily divine, that we can catch glimpses of or even commune with at times. Religion and spirituality aren’t mutually exclusive; one can often lead to the other. But they are separable.
Spiritual experiences—or “self-transcendent” experiences, as researchers prefer to call them—are probably more common than most people think. People of faith have them more frequently than atheists and agnostics, but nonbelievers have them too. A recent report from Pew finds that 45% of people report experiencing a sudden feeling of connection with something from beyond the normal world. While the intensity of these spiritual experiences can vary a good deal, a few qualities unite them. There’s a sense of passivity, in that they come to us unbidden; a “noetic” quality, meaning that they provide a sense of insight; and a deep feeling of connection to the people and world that is intrinsically rewarding.
David Yaden of Johns Hopkins University, one of the leading scientific researchers on spirituality, likes to describe the emotion of awe as the “everyperson’s” spiritual experience. Awe seems to overtake us and, for moments at least, makes us feel fully present, aware of the moment and not of ourselves. It makes us feel closer to others and even more open to the idea that the universe has a hidden order or meaning. An experience of awe may not fundamentally change your life, like a religious conversion, but it is readily available if you know where to look.
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Awe can feel closer at Christmas, even for nonbelievers, since it’s a time when church services are more elaborate and mystical than usual. At a Catholic church, midnight mass on Christmas Eve is filled with sweet-smelling incense and the resonant sounds of choirs. Candlelight flickers around parents holding their children’s hands. Prayers are chanted in unison, sometimes even in Latin, which lays bare their timelessness. The entire experience is beautiful to behold through multiple senses.
It’s exactly these elements—experiencing beauty in sight and sound, witnessing love and care between people, taking part in a group—that Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at UC Berkeley, has found to evoke awe. They can open us to the spiritual by making us feel fully in the moment and connected to something greater than ourselves. Put simply, Christmas services offer a route to transcendence for people of faith and nonbelievers alike.
At times, though, I wonder whether it’s OK for me to attend Christmas services when I don’t believe in the doctrine, or even in God. Most clergy welcome all comers, though not everyone is allowed to partake in sacraments. But if God exists, what does It think?
That’s a difficult question, and I don’t profess to have the answer. Ultimately, it depends on what you think the purpose of religion is. If it’s to worship a deity, then I’m clearly failing six ways to Sunday. But if it’s to be a better person—more Christian in practice, if not belief—then I like to think God would be fine with me stopping by. After all, the reward that spiritual experiences provide isn’t a selfish one. Awe pushes us to pay goodness forward, to be more kind, generous and honest to the people around us. To embody, in essence, the Christmas spirit, whatever our theological beliefs might be.
David DeSteno is a professor of psychology at Northeastern University and host of the PRX Podcast “How God Works: The Science Behind Spirituality.”
Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8 Appeared in the December 23, 2023, print edition as 'You Don’t Have to Be Religious To Feel the Awe of Christmas'.