HumanLight: A secular holiday in December

Posted at Tuesday, December 23, 2008

image: The Humanist Association of Greater Philadelphia hands out awards for volunteers

HumanLight is a new holiday, founded about 8 years ago by a group of Humanists in New Jersey. It's now celebrated by a handful of people throughout the US, and at least one group in England is holding a HumanLight party this year.

The holiday season permeates American culture in December, and the idea was to provide athiest, agnostics, and Humanists, who don't believe in the religious trappings of Christmas and Chanukah with a holiday they could call their own.

This weekend I attended a HumanLight Party in Horsham, Pennsylvania in order to interview people and produce a report for NPR's Morning Edition. The story ran this morning. But I realized I have a lot of great tape that I didn't get a chance to use in the story. For example, I feel we did a good job of explaining the holiday, but not Humanism itself. 

So I thought I'd share excerpts from some of the interviews I didn't get to use in the story here.

First up we have Tony Hileman, former director of the American Humanist Association. I think he explains what Humanism is, and why it was important to create a holiday in December.


Joe Fox is the president of the Humanist Association of Greater Philadelphia, and a co-founder of the holiday.

 

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

3 Comments:

  1. Gary said...
    December 27, 2008 6:48 PM  
    Interesting and informative interviews and story on NPR. I was not aware of HumanLight until hearing this.
    darrien said...
    January 5, 2009 12:54 PM  
    After hearing these two comments I am still convinced as ever that there IS a GOD, and I believe that his name is YHWH (sounds like Yahwah). If humanists say that it's far fetched and unrealistic to believe in a inteligent creator how can they belive that this intier beautiful and vast world could just apear, including the human race. How much more faith do they have to have to believe that this complicated world just appeared?!?! Also, how reliable can evolution be if scientists still can not find evidence of the inbetween stages of evolutionary life. Please who ever that may have the answer to these problems in the system of the humanistic point of view please feel free to bombard me with as much information as posible. My name is darrien davis, and im 13 years old. You can contact me through E-mail, my E-mail is FiddlerDD@hotmail.com, Thanks,Darrien Davis
    Anonymous said...
    December 23, 2009 11:52 PM  
    Thank you for your insights, Tony Hileman. The world really does work better when we do what comes naturally, which is to do what is best for "the greater good of all...."

    The way we live does matter. It's all about love!

    Happy Human Light Day! And to all a good night.

    Milton the Monster (Too much tincture of tenderness...)

Post a Comment



Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)