SF School Board Facing Lawsuit Threat over Vote to Observe Two Muslim Holidays
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I'm not surprised. Maybe if they called it "Midsemester Break", the way the others are called Winter Break and Spring Break, it would be passable.
The secular side of Christmas? Maybe in Europe, but here in the US, Christmas is still a very religious holiday. To the point where saying "happy holidays" to more than 10 strangers in December will likely be met with at least one "It's Merry Christmas" from a Christian who feels oppressed. Speaking as someone from a Jewish family who worked in customer service for many years, Christmas had no secular aspects; we could easily have called it "Movie Day" in my family and it would be accurate.
You're right that we don't get the smaller Christian holidays off. I'm not saying "we get all Christian holidays off", I'm saying "the only religious holidays we get off are Christian". Not all rectangles are squares, but all squares are rectangles.
At my school, spring break was always in late March no matter when Easter was.
> "the only religious holidays we get off are Christian".
While that happens to be true, it's not because Christianity gets any special treatment. It's because the only religious holidays we get off are the ones that have been secularized and commercialized, and the only religious holidays that that's happened to are Christian ones. We don't get any religious holidays off just because of the religious aspect (and we shouldn't, because that would be a giant First Amendment violation).