Christmas

its Christmas again. As usual , my mom, being very religious, wanted the whole family to fast from December 1 to 24th. It may sound difficult, but its not. According to her, the "fast" is all about controlling one's urge to eat meat,fish,eggs(the tasty stuff). She declared, all that will be made from now on will be veggies. I still don't realize how not eating meat is such a big sacrifice. So, like always, i decided to eat whatever mom would make, be it meat or veggies, i didn't really care. we usually have a long 3-4 hour prayer at the church on Christmas eve. Its really bizarre for an atheist to be at the church. standing there, like a statue, staring at the altar while everybody read prayers from the books and sang songs. It was all boring and there were all these thoughts going through my brain as to what I'll be doing after the prayer when i reach home, about my B.E. project, about how dumb theists are, about starting a blog to put forth my views, the name for my blog and a lot of other random thoughts. i stood there for abt 4 hours(we are not allowed to sit while praying, except for 5 min, when a person reads some section of a prayer book during the whole ritual), yawning, doing all those ritualistic hand movements ( taught to me when i was a child ) in response to what the priest did and sometimes letting those strange thoughts take my mind away from the place i hated so much. phew, finally it was all over. I decided to ask some of the boys how they felt about the whole experience in the church. they had the same experience, dull , boring, meaning less. That gave me a hope that i was not the only one. anyways, it was time to return home after the torture. Each time i go through this experience, i experience a sudden urge to tell my mom n dad about how i just cannot follow something that i don't believe in and waste my time like that. but then i suddenly remember the time when my bro started to stop going to the church due to the same reason. but he had a very aggressive way of disagreeing with my parents and they were quite shocked. he didnt give any reasons as such , he just refused. i really don't want to make my parents sad. i just want them to respect my views and accept me the way i am. if only things were so easy .....