Discrimination of Orthodox Christians???

Not caring isn't the same as discrimination.

And since when is christmas a religious thing? Not anymore, at least.
It's all about consumerism and fake promises of being good (but just for the holidays!).

To me, you should be happy that your Christmas is not like this commercial show, although I don't know what you usually do when you celebrate it.

I couldn't care less anyway. I'm atheist, and therefore I'm a good person all year long and celebrate everyday. I don't need an excuse for that.

I'm OK with that BUT by the 7th of January people are back at work. The current Christmas period pretty much coincides with New Years which is when people have time off work, that's why they have to call it 'Holiday' event.
You still have an interesting point, but right now best solution would be to relegate it to user-created events, which I for one would be apart of if I came across it. :)

I think it's time to do something about it

Ah yes, the famous "someone else should do something". Voted no on admins doing your thing. Have nothing against users organizing an event for any sort of a thing/holiday/reason (but in my country we don't give presents for Christmas since it's a religious Jesus-was-born-thing celebrated withing the family, not a commercial gift/shopping-season like in US, which is here NYE).

Thanks for posting this discussion prompt, very interesting to read through all the various takes and comments.

Though I haven't lived there for over 10 years, I was originally born in Bulgaria, Orthodox as well, and thought to offer a little input about the situation in my country. In 1916 (14 March), we officially accepted the Gregorian calendar, starting to count/record time according to it from April 1, which is April 14 according to the Gregorian one. Consequently, Christmas, originally on Jan 7, was moved to Dec 25 to accommodate for this change and this was set as an officially recognized date in 1968. The new calendar also set Jan 7 as name day for "Ivan", probably the most popular name and it's what the vast majority of people recognize the day as.

It's not "discrimination", it's just that Valve is a company with Western culture and they do classical Western celebrations.

If I was shopping in a Muslim shop, I wouldn't be shocked that they don't do Christmas and that they do Ramadan... As long as I'm able to participate in those sales, I'm not being discriminated against. It's basically just different dates for the sales. Who cares, as long as the discounts are good?

(also, Russians are REALLY not discriminated against by Valve, they get more than a 50% discount compared to me all year long... you don't even need to wait for the sales to have good deals, seriously)

I'm from Serbia, but still voted "No".

One interesting read here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revised_Julian_calendar

Revised calendar by Serbian scientist is adopted in most Orthodox countries, but not in Serbia.

I can see your point. I'm not christian and I also don't fast at Ramadan nor do I celebrate chinese new year.
I voted no, because I think your claim should be handled differently. Since we can't have a sale for every religious celebratory, we cut those, which do exist of. Winter-Spring-Autumn-Summer-Sales should be enough then. But even then we won't respect the people on the other site of the world I guess. You get, what I mean?

How many people have to follow a religion, in your opinion, for Steam/SG/... should start to recognised it and do events for the religions holy days?

Dont forget the Yoda´s Religion, and the Jedis.
Aint remember when is their Xmas day

Please tell me this is just another post in the "whitelist/blacklist experiment" series.

I feel discriminated, when strangers dont celebrate my birthday. we should celebrate every day the whole year.

I hereby demand SG creates an event on each friday 13th.
This year, we had two fridays 13th and no event. I feel discriminated.

(On a more serious note, no. Internet events aren't about the holidays themselves, they're about giving the users something cool and/or fun to do. I, for example, am an atheist. Do you think I should demand that we have no events at all because they discriminate atheists? That'd be ridiculous, wouln't it?)

First off, I voted "no" because I don't think it's the admins duty to cater to any religious holiday. If you wanna have an orthodox christmas event go ahead and organize one.

Secondly, and pointed out before, christmas today for most people is about eggnog, cheesy songs and decorations, ugly sweaters and last but not least more eggnog. It can be "celebrated" by people of all faith or no faith at all. In that regard I'd call it inclusive enough & happy holidays everyone ;)

Ps: here in germany we celebrate the "three wise men" on january 6th.

Why don't you make an event? You still have time to make one right now.

Be the change you want to see.

A small correction just to be fair, it's not a discrimination against Orthodox Christians, it's Gregorian vs Julian Calendar (So Orthodox Christmas would be more accurate). Not all Orthodox people have decided to stick with the Julian Calendar.
Most countries, and as a result their respective religions, chose to move on to the Gregorian Calendar because it was more accurate, and they moved all (or some) of their holidays accordingly. A few chose to stick with the Julian Calendar.
In my case we only stuck to celebrating Easter with the Julian Calendar if I'm not mistaken.
Do I feel we need to extend each holiday for about a week so I can feel included even in Easter? Not really. I mean it would be nice to celebrate any holiday longer, let alone Xmas. But I don't really feel discriminated against.
Plus when it comes to games and gifting, most companies, like Steam, do a little celebration for the Lunar New year as well (and other popular holidays that aren't of Catholic or Orthodox origin), Lunar New Year being the Chinese one, also celebrated in January, so if we start celebrating everyone's Xmas and New Year's I think we'd be celebrating for 3 months straight! :P

As someone had already asked you, Do you celebrate others' holidays? I doubt the answer is yes, because simply its too many. If we bring along all holidays from other Race, Religion, Region, Nation, perhaps everyday is a holiday. If you celebrate Everyday as a holiday, then Kudos to you and that is the best and positive attitude.

if you do not celebrate even one event, Are discriminating? Events are celebrated not to discriminate, simply because they are the most commonly celebrated and popular. I dont personally celebrate Christmas nor do I have any religion nor am its of my ethnic but I do enjoy the spirit of the holidays and the atmosphere of the day.

Have a wonderful holiday season and the rest of the year. best wishes for the new year.
Cheers~

I'm Serbian and I completely disagree. Won't be bothering to type out my reasons because by now they are all already mentioned in the comments by other users.

Can't see the reason why. The world celebrates christmas on 25 dec you can too. If we would celebrate every holiday of every culture then every day should be celebrated.

• Xmas in first place is about Santa, gifts, pretty illumination, good food and for some religious dudes about going to church.
• January the 7th christmas is all about religion and church and... and that's it.

And no one wants religion to be forced into neutral internet (or anywhere really), so NO.

Pls no more Christmas events, i am happy that all this is over . o.O sarcasm off

Slightly unrelated, but Christmas isn't over. Traditionally, the 12 days of Christmas are 25th December to 5th January. The 6th of January is "Little Christmas" or in Spain "Kings of Orient" where it's much bigger than December 25th. A Spanish roommate told me that the kids get gifts on the 6th. Commercialization has kinda focused on it being just a big build-up to one day and then nothing. Realistically, many of us still have people visiting from out of town over the days of Christmas. Afterall, our extended family have their own families to have Christmas dinner with. Then it's visiting other people's houses time. Not sure if that's the same for everyone, but we find that we have people to visit, or people coming over. Depending on various work schedules.

So, having a sort of mini-community event by us that covered the 12 days of Christmas would still be inclusive of most people in the west. =) OP still might feel discriminated in that though.

Oh and nothing stopping someone from making a sort of community event for their various holidays if they want to. Isn't that what the forum is for. Afterall, we do events for our cake day, birthday and so on. OP could just make his own event.

i wonder if people would vote NO if they were Orthodox. I can only expect YES from Orthodox users which are not so huge population here compared to Catholics....

EDIT: I missed the OPs edit. FYI, SG is a North American website and of the people who identify as Christian in the USA, only 20% are Catholic and close to 50% are Protestant. :P But it's still only 60% who identify as Christian to begin with. Most other people just accept it as a family holiday/tradition. In Ireland, I am friends with a Muslim couple who embrace Christmas and exchange gifts, not as a religious holiday, but as a local tradition more or less. They could feel discriminated, but they don't because they live here, were born here in fact, and want to be part of whatever is going on in the wider community. They celebrate their own holidays within their own much smaller community and that's awesome too. I think it's ridiculous to say a website based in another country is discriminating against your holidays. That would be like me being unhappy that Russia didn't celebrate Irish traditions like Halloween or St. Patrick's Day. (America does because of Irish immigrants, but you get my point.)

I see absolutely no reason why anyone should care.

Dont forget Christmas as such s commercialised holiday. All the religion has been taken out of it. I know maybe 2 or 3 people who actually go to church and see this holiday as anything close to religious. So to start talking about religion and how Christmas is celebrated differently for Orthodox christians, so others should respect that is just hypocritical. So what should we do about religions that dont celebrate Christmas as such ? Lets cancel holidays because there is a group of people who dont celebrate it ?

If its important to you, you can create your own event - those who care will support you. In no way anyone is required to do anything in such a case. And its as far from discrimination as can be.