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The Church Calendar

This is a living document which lists the days of the year that are recognized by the Apathetic Agnostic Church for special observances. This list is of those days recognized by the Church as a whole. More days will be added over time. Suggestions welcome either through the contact form or via the Members Discussion Board. We would particularly like suggestions for months with only one or two days of observance.

This list is not intended to prevent the various branches of the Church from identifying additional days of regional or national significance. Other agnostics also have selected their own days to celebrate. (Agnostica)

Weekly Day of Apathetic Agnostic Observance: The Church has selected Monday. No other major religion is using it, and it is the day about which people are most apathetic.

National Day of Reason: The first Thursday in May (6 May 2010) has been declared "National Day of Reason" in the U.S.A. For more information, visit the National Day of Reason website.

January

• 1 January: Founder's Day - is observed as the birthday of the Apathetic Agnostic Church founder

• 27 January: Victims of Genocide Day - the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a day to commemorate the victims of genocide throughout history, and to promise "Never again!." (see Meditation 308.)

February

• 9 February: Agnostic Martyrs' Day - to commemorate those whose profession of Agnosticism has brought them to harm at the hands of believers. This date chosen as the anniversary of the attack on our Matriarch of Mississippi. (see Meditation 34)

• 12 February: Darwin Day - to honor the man who provided extensive scientific evidence to support evolution. Charles Darwin was born on this day in 1809. "The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic."

• 29 February: Imperfection Day - A day to reflect upon how and why a supposedly perfect creator did not provide us with a year consisting of an integer number of days. (see Meditation 668 and discussion.)

March

• 17 March: St. Patrick's Day - raise a glass of your favourite brew (green, if you must) to celebrate the successful global secularization of what was once considered a strictly national religious feast day.

April

• (Note: Before you submit yet another suggestion for 1 April, [and we get a lot of those,] we recommend you read Ask the Patriarch 19 and Talk Back 45. If you cannot beat the miserable standard of those submissions, don't bother.)

• 26 April: David Hume Day - born this day in 1711, Hume made a strong case for philosophical naturalism in his writings. He was a major influence on Darwin and Huxley..

May

• National Day of Reason: The first Thursday in May (6 May 2010) has been declared "National Day of Reason" in the U.S.A. For more information, visit the National Day of Reason website.

• 4 May: Huxley Day - the coiner of the word Agnostic, Thomas Henry Huxley, an English skeptic was born on this day in 1825. "When I reached intellectual maturity, and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker, I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until at last I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last... So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of "agnostic". It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic" of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant..."

• 22 May: We're Still Here Day - Harold Camping infamously predicted 21 May 2011 as the day of Final Judgement, with several thousand billboards worldwide. He was wrong. Consequently 22 May is now designated We're Still Here Day to commemorate the failure of every End Times Prediction ever made.

June

• First Saturday in June - F.A.A. Day (see Misc 312)

• 5 June: Feast of Maximum Occupancy - based on a Simpson's episode (see Misc 72) A time to reflect that heaven apparently has a maximum occupancy of 144,000. The odds are against us, so why believe?

• 21 June: Solstice - a mid-summer observance (mid-winter in the Southern hemisphere

• 24 June: Ambrose Bierce Day - Ambrose Bierce, writer and journalist, the author of the Devil's Dictionary, was born this day in 1842. Bierce suffered no fools, spared no enemies, and spat in the face of man-made gods and those who prayed to them.

July

• 11 July: Thomas Bowdler Day; Support Free Speech & Oppose Censorship - birth date of the man who bowdlerized Shakespeare and the Old Testament. On this day we express our support for free speech and our opposition to censorship. (Meditation 78)

August

• 11 August: Ingersoll Day - The leading US Agnostic of the 19th Century, Robert Green Ingersoll was born on this day in 1833. "There is no subject -- and can be none -- concerning which any human being is under any obligation to believe without evidence... The man who, without prejudice, reads and understands the Old and New Testaments will cease to be an orthodox Christian. The intelligent man who investigates the religion of any country without fear and without prejudice will not and cannot be a believer.... He who cannot harmonize the cruelties of the Bible with the goodness of Jehovah, cannot harmonize the cruelties of Nature with the goodness and wisdom of a supposed Deity. He will find it impossible to account for pestilence and famine, for earthquake and storm, for slavery, for the triumph of the strong over the weak, for the countless victories of injustice. He will find it impossible to account for martyrs -- for the burning of the good, the noble, the loving, by the ignorant, the malicious, and the infamous. "

September

• 12 September: H.L. Mencken Day - born this day in 1880, Mencken was an outspoken defender of freedom of conscience and civil rights, an opponent of persecution, injustice, puritanism, and self-righteousness.
• 15 September: Protagoras Day - Protagoras was an early (5thC BCE) Greek philosopher. He reasonably can be regarded as the first agnostic. "Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not or of what sort they may be. Many things prevent knowledge including the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life."

October

• 23 October: Religious Fallacy Day - to recognize the logical fallacies into which believers have been led by blind faith. Set on this day in recognition of Bishop Ussher's calculation of creation as Sunday 23 October 4004 BC. (See Meditation 20 and Meditation 57)

• 31 October: Halloween - Time to dress up as spooks, goblins, witches, wizards, ghosts, werewolves, vampires, and recognize that like all other aspects of the supernatural, these are all mere fictions.

November

• 1 November: Thanksgiving - Give thanks to all those who contribute to putting food on your table (Meditation 267) or to Adam Smith's "invisible hand." Placed on this date due to harvest's traditional association with Halloween, but celebrate in accordance with national preference.

• 11 November: Vonnegut Day - born this day in 1922, Vonnegut was a celebrated and outspoken freethinker, & honorary president of The American Humanist Society. He enjoyed a family heritage of freethinkers, including a sympathetic publication by his great grandfather, Clemens Vonnegut. November 11th also coincides with the historical recognition of Armistice day, honoring global peace following the end of the Great War in 1918. Although Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was a military veteran and a P.O.W. survivor of the the WW II Dresden bombing, we can feel reasonably confident that he would prefer to annually recognize a day aspiring of global peace as opposed to annually recognizing a day honoring the service of military veterans.

• 21 November: Voltaire Day - born on this day in 1694, Francois Voltaire was an Agnostic before there was a word for it.

  • Gunner Nelson, one of our members, proposes we celebrate Voltaire day as he does; distributing cards to his dearest friends. Each card (handmade, just folded paper) contains one or two quotes from our departed friend Francois Marie Arouet, a.k.a. Voltaire. These quotes are selected to fit the personality of the card's recipient, and since a lot of Voltaire's famous quotes are advice, it helps people improve themselves.

• 30 November: Mark Twain Day - Samuel Clemens was born this day in 1835. Under the pen name Mark Twain, he was the foremost American humorist of his day. He wrote a number of essays and articles critical of religion.

December

• The 12 Days of Agnostimas - 21 December to 1 January to celebrate a traditional seasonal festival.
  1. 21 December: Solstice - the traditional mid-winter observance (mid-summer in the Southern hemisphere
  2. 22 December: Apathetic Agnostic Resurrection - commemorates the return of the Apathetic Agnostic web sites to the internet in mid-December 2002 after a three week hiatus due to technical problems. (Meditation 81) This day following Solstice is appropriate because (at least in the Northern Hemisphere where we are based) the days are now getting longer.
  3. 23 December: Festivus - for the rest of us . Invented in 1966 by Dan O'Keefe, whose son Daniel, a writer on Seinfeld, introduced a family tradition to the wider world, and now everyone can participate in an airing of the grievances and in feats of strength
  4. 24 December: Agnostimas Eve
  5. 25 December: Agnostimas - a good day to exchange gifts with friends and relatives in a spirit of generousness, with no need to care about any religious overtones. But we won't object if any traditionalists prefer to devote the day to its original purpose - the worship of Mithras.
  6. 26 December: Boxing Day - the true origin of the name "Boxing Day" can only be answered with absolute certainty with an "I don't know!" And that is reason enough for agnostics to celebrate it. (If you happen to accept the unproven stories that the rich folks used to give the poor folks gift boxes on this day, then be happy about it, and make sure you give out a few gift boxes to the poor.)
  7. 27 December: Heidentag - (German for Heathens' Day) Proposed as a warm and festive occasion for getting together, gift-giving, eating comfort food (usually a lot), listening to our favorite music
  8. 28 December: Childermas - in view of the lack of any evidence to support the horror story of Matthew 2:16, a day to commemorate the inventions and falsehoods on which religion is based. (See Meditation 175)
  9. 29 December: Apathy Day - sated with the celebrations, feasting, and gift exchanges of the festive season, we take a day to relax, recover, and generally not care about anything. For tomorrow, we start partying again.
  10. 30 December: Friendship Day - to honor your friends and show the superiority of having friends instead of enemies. Created in reference to the pontifical decree Sancta Romania in 1317, in which Pope John XXII ordered the Franciscan Spiritualists to obey their superiors against their beliefs, which prompted the Spiritualists to become bitter enemies of the French pontiff by aligning with his enemy Louis IV.
  11. 31 December - Foundation Day - to honor the 1995 foundation of the Church of the Apathetic Agnostic and / or the 1965 development of the term Apathetic Agnostic, together with "I don't know and I don't care" as a personal statement of (lack of) belief.
  12. 1 January - Founder's Birthday

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