I didn't know Easter was a religious holiday until I was 24

I grew up in an unconventional way. My mother was a single parent in the late seventies when it was extremely uncommon and looked down upon. I was a very lucky child in that she had several brothers that at various times took over the co-parenting that would have been done by my father. Not that they were the most responsible of adults at that time, but they gave me the supervision that I needed and let me make a lot of my own choices that would have been dictated by an actual parent. My uncles introduced me to many things like storytelling, science, Greek myth, music, art, cooking, horror movies, and British history just to list a few.
But the very best thing that my mother and my uncles ever did was to keep religion out of my life. I know that it sounds harsh to some people and may even insult others. I think it may even upset my mother, however it's the truth. Now, there were times when my family attempted to introduce me to religion. I went to church with my aunt's family a few times and even attended one night of vacation bible school when I was six or seven. However those few visits to church rolled off of me because I was too little to understand it and because of that I didn't care to go back. A lot of parents would have sent their kids back, but not my mom. She knew that if she forced me to do anything I didn't want to she would be met with a solid wall of "I'm not doing that". Hell when I was four and she told me that I was going to be going to Head Start, I countered her statement with an offer. I would go to school only if she promised me that I would be home every day in time for Scooby-Doo. I can't imagine what I would have done if I had been forced back to church, I highly doubt it would have been good.
The closest I ever got to religion were my books on Greek and Roman myth that I got at our RIF Fair's when I was in the fourth grade. I loved those books and my uncle Jack would discuss them with me from time to time. We didn't know that I was in the middle of my reasoning development, which depending on your source, is the ages from seven to nine when children begin to understand what a conscience is and what morality is. It's no coincidence that it's around the age of nine that the Catholic church calls The Age of Discretion which is the time when children become responsible for their actions and must account for their "Sins". Basically it's this time in our lives as humans we are starting to develop our understanding of how to behave and the repercussions of our actions.
My age of understanding wasn't interrupted by an imaginary being that lived on a cloud. I was taught right from wrong, I was taught to be good to people, I was taught how to think for myself and to make my own choices.
I wish that I could say that I stayed that strong, but I didn't. I saw Mel Gibson's the Passion of the Christ in 2004 and the next day I bought my first bible. When I was twenty-eight I started attending a Nazarene church. I loved going because I really liked the people who attended it, I even liked the Sunday school. I liked the sense of community that I got when I would attend and eventually I was baptized. I wanted so badly to fit into that group of people that I let go of all of my beliefs. I declared myself a Republican and a Nazarene, but inside my head my brain was screaming "YOU ARE AN APE! YOU BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION!". I was doing all of those things because I was lonely and wanted to fit in with any group of people. Chances are if I had been asked to, I would've joined the Black Panther's.
I secretly started to pull myself away from that church and re-embraced the person I had always been. And I realized that The Passion of the Christ upset me so much because I couldn't understand how anyone could be so cruel to another person, even if it was two thousand years ago. I began a friendship with a funny and cute man in Iowa who also believed in evolution and was an atheist. Eventually our relationship developed into love, I moved to Iowa, and we are now married.
Last night I followed a link on a blog to a website by the Richard Dawkins Foundation that is prompting all Atheist and Agnostics to come out of the closet. I hadn't realized that three years ago I had gone into one. So, here I am thirty-one years old having lived most of my life as an Atheist "coming out".
Peace