Ottawa

Well, that's just stupid. I was in Scouting for a little over a decade and we participated in many secular events. Secular doesn't mean atheist, it means not specifically religious. This is like saying they can't volunteer at the food bank because it's a secular organization.

Not being a theocracy or even having an official religion, our country itself is secular.

Another atheist here. I don't like telling other people what to do when they are not harming anybody. Whether association X wants or doesn't want to celebrate Y is none of my business.

I understand that it might seem a step too far, but in a way I'm thankful that someone is pushing back against the whitewashing of Christian holidays as the default.

Christmas is not secular, though in North America (and I'm sure Europe to some extent) we love to try to turn it into a capitalist holiday "for everyone." The fact that even atheists support it in mostly the same way as practicing Christians shows how effective this is.

Even in our supposedly secular society, Christianity is maintained as the norm by our continuation of their practices upheld at the cultural level. You see it in some areas where specifically Sundays are codified as days of rest, where Christmas and Easter are codified as statutory holidays, where "visible" symbols of religion are banned but Christians can keep on wearing their necklaces under their clothes, where crosses are at times not even seen as religious.

OP, you said that you "would happily attend" other celebrations, but I note that even you say you celebrate Christmas. And while you might go to another holiday event if invited, I'm willing to bet that it's a rarity and you find it to be something of an interesting learning experience. Because culturally, those holidays are othered.

I'm just so tired of us pretending that we've become a secular society while we continue to uphold Christianity in all of these ways. We still have real work to do to unlearn Christianity's cultural supremacy in the west.

Eh. It's a secular celebration of a season by an overtly secular organization. I don't think it falls under the category religious.

I can see staying away from closed rituals that are solely intended for followers, but, like OP says, this is an open celebration.

For a moment there I was wondering why the Girl Guides would object to the secularism policy of the Santa Claus Parade.

As an atheist this is fine, if they have a secular policy then they can have a secular policy. It’s none of my business

I understand your points, they make a lot of sense. Both sides (if youll allow me to generalize) are often overly sensitive to the religious traditions or lack thereof and we could all do to lighten up on it a little.

However, I personally was raised in a very conservative home and attended a christian educational institution (they call it a school, its more like brainwash camp) and since becoming an atheist I strongly prefer to stay far away from organized religion, especially religious holidays. It cannot be a separated from the religious aspect for my family, it is a constant presence and the major theme for those occasions for them. This perspective makes the major holidays stressful and exhausting for me, as family strife reaches an all time high, and it's rather difficult during december because the christian holiday is absolutely pervasive. It would be nice if we could separate our society from such strong judeochristian vibes.