You know that feeling you used to get when you missed mass?

[james7300]

Well I have it all the time only 10 times worse.

I decided not to send my son to a Catholic school. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I'm now an atheist so didn't see any point in putting him through all that stuff.

But now I regret that decision. I feel sad that he won't learn all the hymns and take part in the celebrations that I took part in. Not to mention Christmas and Easter.

I should add I live in the west of Scotland, so he goes to a non-denominational school. And I'm sure my Irish mother is heart broken although she rarely mentions it.

[Beebub]

What's stopping your from celebrating Christmas and Easter? Christians took over existing celebrations at these times and fit their stories and timelines into them. We celebrate Christmas wil our kids. We get a tree and decorate it. Santa comes. We exchange gifts and celebrate with family and friends. At no time is religion mentioned or is an issue. None of the above things has its origins in the Christian religion anyway.

What's to stop you from brining your child to a carol service?

[Tulip1]

We do Christmas, Easter and Saint Nicolas (I am Dutch) with all the things except religion.

[chemicals]

We go to Germany for the Christmas markets -they are very religiously themed rather than the Santa and reindeer crap we have here . its lovely if it snows ,the carols the hot wine and the decoration etc..you can enjoy the cultural aspects of these holidays without having to actually believe its all true .

[bipedalhumanoid]

There's a feeling you get when you "miss" mass?

The thought that I wasn't in mass didn't at any point cross my mind at any point in my life. I certainly had a feeling on the very few occassions when I was forced to go to mass. It was of extreme boredom, wishing I was somewhere else and wondering why I was being robbed of my sunday morning while all the other kids were either out fishing or still in bed.

As for the schooling, here in Ireland it was recently announced that 10% of class time was devoted to religious studies compared to only 4% spent on science. That figure doesn't include prayers that occur during the school day either.

I'm certainly not disappointed to learn that I missed out on religion at my secular school. I'd be far more concerned if I'd missed out on the science, which is apparently what I was learning while the Irish kids were learning about an invisible man in the sky.