War on Christmas

It always amuses me when I hear of Christians bashing atheists (usually in the USA) for objecting to religious symbols and ceremonies being rammed down our secular throats at this time of year. Almost invariably all that's really happening is that (in the USA at least) secular patriots are simply asking that their (hard won) constitution be properly followed and that no particular religion is promoted by the government over any other, this seems totally reasonable to me. In the UK of course we (unfortunately) don't have any such clear constitution, the Government here are at liberty to shove the state religion down our throats any time they feel like it. Fortunately for secularists and atheists here, the state religion isn't particularly aggressive or pushy and is pretty much universally ignored by everyone apart from it's adherents (which is kind of how it should be with any private belief system IMO) Before anyone thinks I've gone soft on state religions, rest assured I haven't, I still think we need to change our system as even our relatively benign state religion can still be manipulative and insidious, particularly when it comes to children and schools.

Compare and contrast this with the situation in Islamic dictatorships like Brunei where the supreme leader has banned anyone from celebrating Christmas without Government sanction. Apparently it's now a criminal offence there to openly celebrate Christmas (presumably in a Christian way) for fear of corrupting the poor weak minded Muslims that must obviously inhabit that sad little country; a slightly surreal state of affairs. Now that's what I call a real "War on Christmas".