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Comment by tyxodiwktis | Hacker News Reader

This isn’t necessarily true outside the US. The running joke about Greeks is that they are 98% Greek Orthodox (official stats from a while ago) and 40% atheist. You might be atheist and communist (a fairly common combo in Greece) but will still probably roast a lamb on Easter with your family.

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Having married into a Greek family, I can certainly attest to this, but I'll shed a bit more light to the sentiment behind that statement. To the Greeks, the Greek church is part of their cultural identity, rather than a purely religious entity. There is a community that stems from the church, traditions that are intertwined in it, and just a general presence in their daily lives in a way that I don't think I've really observed in the US. Oddly enough, it doesn't really outwardly express itself as dogma or doctrine, in the way that I've noticed with a lot of Evangelicals or Catholics in the states. The church is more of an ever present fixture in Greek life than a strong belief in Orthodox teachings.

In Australia most historically “Christian” holidays are for the majority of people just time off to spend with family.

How or why they started or what the religious think of them now is irrelevant.

The traditional Christian holidays are largely former Roman holidays, so they're mostly just good times to have parties.

Rename lupercalia to Valentine's Day, Saturnalia to Christmas, etc. To make Christianity a seamless switch for the Roman populace

I agree. I first learned that Christian Atheist was possible in an Anglican Church in England.

Turkey is the same way. The government says 99.8% of the population are Muslim by default but it’s probably closer to 60%.

Until a few years ago religion was listed on government identification cards. When you’re born your parenrs must state a religion for your birth certificate or it is automatically listed as Muslim.

You had to go through a burdensome official process as an adult to change this, and once you did this you legally admitted to Apostasy, which opens you up to discrimination (and future consequences if the government were to fall to islamists or neo-ottomans).

Furthermore, it was very common to be discriminated against by HR departments / hiring managers if Islam was not present on your Kimlik (government ID).

This only went away with recent passport and national id standards changing in their futile attempts to join the EU.

(Consider that Turkey is by far the most liberal and secular Muslim nation.)

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