Given the unending profitability of Christmastime, it seems unlikely that there was ever exactly a lull in Christmas albums. Whether it’s the Chipmunks, Streisand, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, it’s a given that record execs will see to it that at least someone out there cranks out something flecked with shiny tinsel as the earth makes its annual round closest to the sun. Yet with the growing popularity of Christian rock, and recent holiday albums from Sufjan Stevens, the Raveonettes, Twisted Sister, rapper Jim Jones, and now Stephen Colbert among others, it certainly feels as though they’re making a comeback. Interestingly, all this pop devotion also seems to match the pace of another social trend that’s gained credence in recent years: Atheism. While not necessarily related, it stands to reason that a rise on either side is bound to be met with a vocal response from the other. The important thing to remember is that even those of us not trampling Wal-Mart temps to death for a half-price copy of Now That’s What I Call Christmas! Vol. 3 deserve presents once or twice a year, too. It’s still the solstice, after all, which has been reason enough to celebrate for far longer than anything magi, menorah, or even Mithras-related. It can be a little awkward to navigate between the noel and the naysayers with commerce and piety married at such polarizing volumes, and yet whether you choose to wrap presents in red and green, blue and white, yellow and black, newspaper, rags, or banana leaves, it’s always nice to dole ’em out this time of year. To that end, the gift of music is always a safe bet, but then the question is, what’s a thoughtful gift for the headphone-hugging loved one that’s into neither faith nor Faith No More?

While there’s no shortage of amusingly sacrilegious t-shirts and baby Jesus butt-plugs on the web, not every honest nonbeliever is an asshole, just as while there’s plenty of punk rock and metal of various merit out there simply bursting with refutations of the Man Upstairs, not every heathen is a headbanger. So what can you do for the mild-mannered, proudly godless music lover in your life, who’s more into the Flying Spaghetti Monster than, say, The Spaghetti Incident? Actually, there’s plenty.

For every generation and for fans of every genre, there’s a blasphemous blockbuster or two. Even as most artists’ catalogs and outlooks evolve, there are at least moments that can be enjoyed by even the most conventional of infidels, alongside the more progressive. Probably the most famous examples beyond punk and metal are those by John Lennon, whose 1971 “Imagine” continues to be an atheist anthem beloved the world over, although his song “God” was much more to the point and came out a year earlier. Not every faithless hit is as obvious or even as memorable, though. Later in the ’70s and throughout the ’80s and beyond, there was Billy Joel, who remains the sixth best-selling artist from the US. He’s Jewish by birthright but hung out a lot among Catholics growing up, attending a mass here and there and deciding that neither pile of guilt meant much to him. His easy-access, down-to-earth brand of New York-centric pop/rock ‘n’ roll has garnered plenty of radio success, including the song “Only the Good Die Young”, which made the Top 25 in 1977 while being banned by several radio stations and denounced by members of the church for being anti-Catholic. Joel maintains the song was more about lust than religion, although he has also talked candidly about his atheism in the past. More recent rumor has it he’s been saying “God bless you” to people lately, so it’s possible in his old age he sings a different tune, so to speak. Yet today, for our enjoyment, there remain his records from the period when he preferred to “laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints… The sinners are much more fun.”

Another blip on the humanistic radar of the ’80s was XTC’s sleeper anti-god hit “Dear God”, which had trouble circulating in the UK as music shop-owners feared backlash from the religious, but which found a home on US college radio. The song posits a series of questions to sweet lordy, including, “Did you make mankind after we made you?” It describes a variety of forms of human suffering, all attributed to the “dear god I can’t believe in.” It’s as straightforward as they come—“I won’t believe in heaven and hell / No saints, no sinners, no devil as well”—and all laid out in a pleasant new wave/alternative melody with clean production. An updated, trip-hop-ish version by Tricky can be found on his 2003 LP, Vulnerable, and for the Lilith Fair attendant atheist, there’s the Sarah McLachlan version, as found on the 1996 XTC tribute album, A Testimonial Dinner.

The ’90s started off promising with R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion”, which, catchy and jam-packed though its video was with religious iconography, turned out to be an atheist’s red herring, as was the Sinéad O’Connor/SNL incident a year later. The R.E.M. song is actually just a love song; Michael Stipe has explained that the phrase “losing my religion” is a southern US expression for losing one’s composure or coming to the end of one’s rope. (R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck has repeatedly declared himself an atheist in the press, however, and since the song was born around a mandolin riff of his, it might as well sneak onto any mainstream atheist playlist.) When Sinéad O’Connor tore up a photo of Pope John Paul II on live network television, it drew the ire of thousands and prompted the singer’s banishment from the sketch comedy show as well as many radio stations, yet was not exactly a shot at God. It was a statement of protest against sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. O’Connor herself is actually rather devout in a sort of non-denominational way, observing that “religion and God are two very different things,” as she told Interview magazine in 2005. Recently, she has found refuge in the Rastafari, and continues her career making her own sort of devotional music.

In 1993 came Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged acoustic performance, which was released as an album one year later. The recording, made just five months prior to Kurt Cobain’s suicide, includes Nirvana’s cover of the Vaselines’ lovely “Jesus Doesn’t Want Me for a Sunbeam”, which poses some very simple yet ambiguous refutation of ol’ JC. Aside from being an excellent listen, it wins points of eeriness for being sung by so dark and doomed a character, although there’s little evidence as to whether the band itself had much by way of strong leanings to either side of the faith debate.