thanks for the good posts people :-)

i think people should be allowed to celebrate whenever they wish and i'm certainly not suggesting that people not be allowed to celebrate christmas or whatever.

what i was suggesting, however, is that the statutary holidays be more neutral both with respect to between religions and whether it is religious at all.

because currently the statutary holidays (in the US, Canada, the UK, Australasia) seem to be based around christian religions. as there is more diversity in the world however (and as we get better at acknowledging that) i thought it might be a nice idea to have a neutral statutary holidays and of course people could still celebrate when they wanted...