I think everyone would laugh 

You sayin'

QuoteHumans, it turns out, are impressionable, emotional and irrational.

as you pointed out in the economist Sue?   Mind if I use the familiar? 

And errr....

Quotetolerant quasi-academics

Where did you find the word tolerant from in that sentence?   

(/ducks)

Combined daily readership of The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent and The Financial Times = 1,790,872

Combined daily readership of The Sun, The Mirror, The Star, The Daily Mail and The Express = 7,176826

Britain has LOTS of morons!  

there would be more reason to react in the UK though, we don't call Christmas 'the holidays' so a 'holiday tree' here is like the WhiteHouse calling it a 'Vacation Tree'.

I think you'd actually find that most Brits would call whoever said it a tosser and carry on as normal. I want my midwinter festival with fairy lights (or are they now called something less potentially offensive), lots of food and stacks of presents. I call it Christmas, you can all call it what you like.

Here, terms like 'Holidays' and 'Xmas' seem to be pushed mainly by big corporate retailers and the media, in other words, tossers.

The US has a ton of holidays at the end of the year, so "Happy Holidays" doesn't mean "Christmas"...it means:

"Happy Thanksgiving"

"Happy Hanakah if you celebrate that"

"Merry Christmas if you celebrate that"

"Happy Kwanzaa"

and Happy New Year...

Although, a "Holiday Tree" is pushing it a bit far, though many Jews as well as Christians put up a Christmas Tree.  

As far as "Jesus being born on Dec 25", ask any theologian and they will say "Yes, we didn't know when he was born, and he was probably born in the summertime because shepherds only watch their flocks at night during lambing season (the spring).  The date in December was chosen because Jesus is known as "the light" and the winter solstice is when the light during the day starts getting longer...sort of like saying 'the light is born.' 

The fact that it squashed over the Pagans having their holidays was just icing on the cake as far as the old theologians were concerned.

The preacher I date gave a sermon on this a few Sundays back.

Yes.  I realize I'm breaking the TOS.  I'll never speak of this again.

On that note I'm locking this thread... Religion is forum poison.