How about holidays because humans are living, breathing, thinking, emoting beings that need decent food, shelter, rest and recreation? The closing of businesses on at least one weekend day need not be religious. If we run oit for a day or two, we get some from a neighbor or are just out for a day or two?

hear me out, i may be less for adding more religious holidays.

this is based on trying to use b and h as a professional service. they close for EVERY Jewish holiday. there's so many of them. so many more then Christian holidays that others close for. AND they still close for those Christian holidays.

it makes them unpredictable and hard to use. if they also started taking off Muslim holidays they'd be closed every 2 days... that's just too much. i don't think we as a society can afford to take that many holidays.

it's very hard to explain to you boss why we have to delay because the partner we're contracted with is closed until Monday because of a holiday that your boss has never heard of.

I want a whole fucking week off like India, how come they get to do that and we can't?

100%. Very similar to "the war on men" or "the war on white people".

I hate that argument because the reason why it's still celebrated isn't the pagan origin but its appropriation by the Christian Church.

Todd forbid

You are missing the point.

Easter this year is the 31st of March.

The ENTIRE COUNTRY (the UK this is) will be forced to SHUT DOWN for the weekend, whether they are Christian or not. Banks. Businesses. Everything will close for the entire weekend.

But wait -- it gets worse.

The school year is split into three terms -- Winter, Spring and Summer. And because Easter is so early (because a bunny looked at a gopher's shadow or something) the Spring term starts in January (with the New Year) and ends on the 24th of March (I think). That's barely enough time to get kids settled in their classes. Then the summer term is like A BILLION WEEKS LONG because Easter is so early.

Then

when Easter is a lot later -- you get the two bank holidays in May (one of which is religious, one of which isn't) that fuck up the summer term and make it almost not worth going back for the one week before you are off again.

This is entirely because of Christian holy days

And on top of all this there is the fact we still keep "Sunday special" -- a day that only one religion gives a crap about. Thankfully we are getting over that and starting to treat Sunday like every other day of the week. But if you ask most people they think it should still be "a rest day" because it is Sunday.

This entire country bends over backwards to accommodate Christianity in everything it does, and yet the Little Englanders always feel Christians are hard-done by.

Christians by the bible and old customs are also supposed to pray in the morning noon and evening. Thats why the churches ring the bell at those times.

So it is only by not taking their religion all too serious anymore that christians dont ask for their noon prayer.

For daily prayers, yes that is a daily occurance. We pray 5 times a day but only the afternoon prayers are something we'd need to take a break for.

But you can work around it and you might only need to take a 5 minute break once a day. So like the post and you have mentioned it's not that much of an interruption.

However, Fridays are a different story. We have to go our sermon which might be an hour so. In the US Saturday+Sundays are off so that's not something that would interfere with a work/school schedule. Personally, in our high school we held our own prayers after school on Fridays. But I know for a fact that didn't work for all my Muslim peers.

Holidays are another issue, we'd need to take 2 days off a year to observe our holidays. I wouldn't go as far as so say this is systemic oppression. You just get an excused absence or use pto lol.

Where it would become a problem is if your requests to take off work/school were to be denied. But thankfully that isn't usually an issue in the US.

Besides, in some school districts non-Christian holidays are starting to become recognized and may already be off.

Overall there is a consistent minor friction causes by daily schedule differences. And especially in school a student may never even ask for accommodations for fear of being "different". Even though when you ask generally when you ask you will be accommodated.

shitting into our bare hands

That might have been just you, no one else was doing that

Say this when it's a country's primary religion on the line, not when some minorities want equal rights for their religions.

invisible sky daddies

Oh I am definitely using this phrase from now on. I've been using "imaginary friends" until now, but this is SO much better :)

Hanukkah isn't an important religious holiday, but it is an important cultural one. Partly because it's adjacent to Christmas (for north american Jews at least) and partly because the story occurred later on in Jewish history compared to much of the Holy texts.

I don't know anyone who takes days off work for Hanukkah, most just want to be home for sun down to light the candles.