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In real life, most countries have their dominant religion. In America, Europe, and most Spanish-speaking nations, that's Christianity. In Japan, it's Buddhism. In India, it's Hinduism.

Dominant religions will also have at least some effect on a country's culture and lifestyle, regardless of how much they try to keep religion and politics separate. Heck, the Japanese have a religiously-originated fertility festival where a giant wooden p***s is carted around town... gaijin don't seem to care. It's part of the local culture.

I'd like to think people are mature enough to accept that, but nooooo. You can't say Merry Christmas in America anymore. It's getting awfully hard to even get away with putting up Christmas trees in public places. I don't even observe holidays and I still think that's ridiculous. Christmas is part of America's culture, I don't celebrate it but you don't see ME trying to get in the way of what has become a natural part of the winter holiday season.

Such a shame that Gaia does that too... I mean... X-Mas? Holiday Tree? And remember that EI report where Timmy was with a priest from the "Nondenominational Church of Nonspecific Worship"? That one was just pathetic. Be nice if Gaia didn't go out of it's way to avoid even MENTIONING real religions or anything related to a real religion.

The Nintendo series "Dobutsu no Mori" ("Animal's Forest", better known as "Animal Crossing") used to have real holidays in it. Now I hear it has festivals instead. sad

If people are offended by religions other than their own, then that's just sad, pathetic, and immature.

I think a lot of people are missing the point to the "Happy Holidays" vs. "Merry Christmas" thing. Being an atheist, I don't really celebrate many holidays. I do celebrate the American version of Christmas in the sense that I give gifts to everyone I know. I have no problem with people telling me "Merry Christmas" or any other holiday greeting because that is what they celebrate, it doesn't offend me. What does offend me is when a government organization assumes I'm a certain religion. Private business, individuals, churches, etc, I don't care because it's not a State or Federal run operation. So, Happy Holidays to all. I don't know what you celebrate, but happy December regardless.

I picked up on that but I would have preferred a real or made-up religion over a satirical one.

There are non-denominational churches out there, aren't there?

Anyway, I have no problem with it being called X-Mas. I've seen it called X-Mas since elementary school decades ago, soooo.. yeah. That's hardly a new wave or trend. Happy Holidays doesn't bug me either, then again I'm not really bothered by the removal of Christmas decorations from public property either, so hey.

One thing to keep in mind is that the religion itself in most cases does not actually bring about the inhumanity you speak of, but rather the followers. There is a difference here.

Most religions focus on being kind and forgiving to others rather than insisting everyone of different faiths be rivals. It is those that think to themselves that their religion somehow absolves them from all guilt and/or that their religion needs to be forced onto others because of how highly they think of it that causes the problem... in other words "elitism".

Even if you take religion out of the picture, you will see this elitist personality arise in other areas. For example, have you heard of people starting riots after sports events? This is caused by elitist mentality. Some people believe their team is so much better than the other team that they will start a fight over it.

The reason religion has such a high profile in regards to such actions is mostly due to the amount of followers. Each sports team only has a limited amount of those who feel some sense of loyalty to their team, and a smaller percentage of that are the ones that have the elitist mentality in regards to their team. Being that the number of sports teams in existence is so vast and carries over into many different kinds of sports, the audience is spread too thin for anything major to really come from it. With religion, however, there are relatively very few in comparison to the world's population. Therefore, each religion has many more followers than a sports team would, thus a larger amount of people that feel a sense of loyalty to their religion and a larger amount that develop elitism.

Furthermore, as the idea of having no religion grows in popularity, you begin to see the people without religion starting fights with the people that believe in religion because they too are developing the mentality that their way is the only way. While atheism and agnosticism are typically seen as the practice of no religion, there are those who bind to them, follow them, and preach them just as if they were religions... making "no religion" the new religion. Kind of ironic.

As an atheist, I have had my share of people preaching to me. I'm not one to pretend that I am of another religion. That's not what America was founded on and I will not live my life in fear. On the other hand, I choose not to talk about what I believe during inopportune times, like at work. On the flip side, I haven't met many "true" atheists. Many just are unsatisfied by main stream religion that they say that God has turned their back on them or that they hate God. I know many people are mistrustful of Muslims in our county right now, but compared to an atheist, they belong to the "we believe in something" club. I try not to hold it against people, but sometimes the hate can be too much.