It's the bog standard council run primary school, it's probably because I live in carrot crunching land, populated by god fearing, interbred idiots. The other schools in this area are much the same. There are three churches in our tiny town, and another five within a two mile radius, maybe it's unavoidable.
To some extent I can understand the problem other religions have with Christmas in this country. How many times have you heard christian or agnostic people complain about how early they are advertising christmas on TV and how early all the things are in the shops. If it can annoy christians, it's likely to annoy other religions more, the Santa's Grotto's are probably just the icing on the cake that annoyed a few non christians too much.
That said, they should still get a life and try worrying about something more important.
As mentioned, origins of the December 25th celebration were the Pagans celebrating the return of the sun, as the days started to get longer again after the shortest day on the 23rd. Considering the sun provided everything their culture lived on, it seems a very good reason to celebrate. There are some residuals from the pagan festival, such as Yule Logs, and flambéing the christmas pudding, which represented the sun. As with most things the devious christians hijacked the festival to celebrate the birth of that bearded ****, who historians actually reckon was born around February or March, although how the **** they would be able to work that out is beyond me. The christians thought the celebration would be accepted more readily if they celebrated it alongside the existing celebration, it would appear they were correct.
