Right now, Solstice is optimized for adults, and evokes “Midnight Mass” more than anything else.
Ultimately, if Secular Solstice is successful, it needs to be fun for kids. It’s been pointed out to me that, for good or for ill, it needs to compete with Christmas on capitalism’s terms: if this weird new holiday isn’t going to get them the Hot New Toy that all the cool kids are getting, kids aren’t going to care about it.
Right now there’s a phenomenon wherein young atheists care a lot about atheism/humanism/secularism during college, but then get on with their lives and disappear off the Secular Community Grid for a decade. Their social lives are filled with fun young-adult activities. Until suddenly they have kids and they feel a need to give those kids a community that’ll help them be strong, happy and virtuous.
By default, the communities they turn to tend to be religious. Some new parents end up going to Ethical Culture or the UU. Many more end up going to something traditionally religious. Or something like Boy Scouts, which isn’t officially religiously affiliated but is heavily supported by the Mormons.*
Right now I don’t have kids, and like many other secular organizers, I’ve been creating the product that I want – a social world for people my age, with more profound-ness than what I’ve found before. But in the long game a) I’ll be older, possibly with kids, b) for secularism to win the culture-war, it needs to provide a valuable service to the majority of people who don’t super-much care about atheism, but would prefer a non-religious community/culture for their kids if possible.
I was recently told by a parent that for their family to actually switch from Secular Christmas to Solstice, it’d need to actually make their kids happy. This also suggests there needs to be a clear roadmap for parents – how to use Solstice to make their kids happy.
Very vague ideas so far:
- Embed giftgiving into the holiday more directly, with a specific eye in mind for what kids want as opposed to what’s fun for adults.
- Perhaps write a Solstice children’s book, that is both a fun story for kids and a *useful* picture for adults about what family-Solstice looks like. According to wikipedia, “The Night Before Christmas” poem actually played a pretty big role in shaping Christmas towards a more secular holiday.
- Then again, thinking in terms of traditional media is pretty limiting. Night Before Christmas was successful as a poem/book in an era where books were the way you broadcast ideas. An interactive game on the internet might be more of the way to get things done.