On Wed, 16 Sep 1998, Verlag Dr. C. Mueller-Straten wrote:

> Come on, dear Bob, this can`t be true. Christianity has included so many rites
> and symbols of former religions (including, of course, all Mediterranean ones as
> well as Jewish ones), that you should contact an Historian specialised in
> Religions immediately in order to make you fit for things to come. If you have
> ever visited Europe, than you will understand, that Christendom can not beed
> understood at all without the underlying older cultures...

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When I was Director of Arts & Museums for the very "multi-cultural" City
of Leicester in central England (about 45% of the 270,000 population were
from first or second generation immigrant families from around 80
countries of origin in all five continents) we started the "holiday"
displays and street lights around the beginning of October (preparation
for the Hindu festival of Diwali).  The  street and other decorations
(e.g. in schools and the museums) continued (with a few appropriate
modifications as to current symbols) through Halloween, Guy Fawkes Night,
Chanuka, Scandanavian St Nicholas & Christingle festivals, the Roman and
Protestant Churches' Christmas, New Year, the Orthodox Christmas and then
ran breathlessly on to Ramadan and  the festival of Eid, taking in a
couple of Sikh Guru anniversaries on the way.  (In years with a late
Ramadan and and early Easter or Passover the not stop festivals might be
even run on with hardly a break into April!

The point is that except for literally half-a-dozen noisy racists and
Christian fundamentalists everyone seemed delighted.

Clearly from what has been said on this either the US is much less
tolerant overall (which I doubt) or - much more likely - extremist lobbies
are both much better organised and taken far too seriously.

Patrick Boylan