It's that time of the year again.

What time of the year is it?  The time for eggnog and carols?  The time for decorating trees and eating more turkey than is medicinally safe?  Unfortunately no, its the time of the year when fundamentalists go around complaining that atheists are ruining Christmas.

I case you don't want to listen to the video here is the quote:

Atheists don’t like our happiness! They don’t want you to be happy! They want you to be miserable! They’re miserable, so they want you to be miserable, so they want to steal your holiday away from you.

First off I don't really know any atheists who are miserable by and large.  Of course just like everyone we have our good days and our bad, but we seem to fit within the normal bell curve of happiness with no major difference between us and the more religious people out there.

The truth is many atheists like the secular aspects of Christmas, it is a national holiday after all with many non-Christians celebrating it. For my part I enjoyed it quite a bit even after ceasing to be a believer, though thanks to people like Robertson I've been less fond of it the last several years since due to the influence of him and others people in my family think I'm one of those "miserable" atheists trying to steal the holiday.

Ironically it's generally not Christmas that make atheists miserable, it's the realization that there is a large number of people out there who still take Pat Roberson seriously.