>I live in an area with an extremely liberal school board. In order as to not "offend" any particular religious group, the holidays break has been turned into the "Winter Festival". Specific mention of Christmas, Hannukah, or any other religious component is discouraged (maybe even outright banned but I'm not sure of that).
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>So...it's a tyranny of the offended minority. To me - the evil libertarian-conservative, the path to understanding is not to stamp out respect for cultural traditions (there's the jackboot part), but to celebrate it and to educate. I would absolutely love my kids to learn all about the traditions of other cultures rather than suppress any mention of them. The current line of thinking is intolerant; it's intolerant of the idea that with understanding comes respect; it's intolerant of the idea that we all come from different backgrounds and to homogenize it is to diminish tolerance.

While I agree with calling it "Winter whatever", the rest that policy is just bull. One of those where someone bows to someone else's will only to mock it by applying the policy in such a roughshod manner - in order to show the thing was wrong per se.

While I did rant a lot during the last such season (and actually cringe thinking of the month when I hate to turn on the TV or to go shopping - when there's nothing for me there), my rant was against shoving Christmass into everyone's throat, not against anyone's celebrating. And in that respect, the intolerance you mention is insane. Amputation is not a cure. To celebrate diversity and tolerance, you first have to make all those visible. My little rant is about "all" - not just those with means of PR pressure, but others as well, including nonbelievers. Actually, most of my rants around religion seem to come from the near invisibility of nonbelievers in public. Somehow these 18% of people here can't be heard.