"So the wishes of 2.7m Christians to celebrate the birth of Christ is irrelevant to secularists like you."

No-one is stopping Christians celebrating Christmas as they see fit. It is, however, a national holiday and the shops and banks are shut whatever religions and none people have. It has a use as something to break up the winter months and it leads nicely on to the New Year celebrations. It is also mostly oriented towards a Green Man celebration again. As most of us aren't practising Christians, I think the least Christians can do is let us get on with celebrating the season as we see fit too.

David, Leicestershire, UK

Now that Christmas has become Consumerfest - the most important festival of the Consumerist religion to which the great majority of the British people now adhere - there is no longer any reason for it's date to be determined by the Christian (or pagan if you prefer it) calender. Would it not be sensible therefore to move it to a different time of the year when it is warmer, day light hours are longer, the roads are safer, people are less likely to have colds and flus and the children can play outside instead of being cooped up in the house. The dwindling few who still practice the rituals
of the Old Old Story or the converts to the rituals of New Age Nonsense could be left in peace to indulge in them without the distractions of commercialism. For the Old Old Story adherents there would be an added advantage as they would be able to to get to their temples by public transport just like the aherents of all the other, more recently arrived, religions can do now.

Jon, London, UK

This is the second article I've read within 24 hours of Christmas Day that purports to know already how many Anglicans attended church then. Please tell me how you know this because I'm not aware of having provided anyone with the numbers who attended church with me on Christmas Day. The premiss of your article seems to be that secularism is now the order of Christmas Day and it's based on statistics that you can't possibly possess. That makes your item dihonest at best and stupid at worst. As Jim of Oulu wrote, what were the other 40m people doing? Are you also privy to information about their beliefs too? And I've lost count of the times people like Mykl have claimed that Christians hijacked the winter festival. Of course we did Mykl, because we were pagans before we were Christians and have every right to dust down, rejig and celebrate in a reformed way what used to be ours before we converted. It's perfectly logical if you think about it.

Tam Earl-Aine, Cheltenham,

Whilst christmas is definately not the most important christian celebration of the year you cannot take secularily. With thansgiving the americans are celebrating the safe arrival and colonisation of the pilgrim forefathers that were to make their nation. If you have had a secular christmas what exactly sare you celebrating, what is it that your are remembering?

Stephen Lilico, shrewsbury, England

'but I listen respectfully when the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, speaks. Not because of his religion, but because of his character and his behaviour. '

Is that the same Archbishop of York, about whom the Guardian had to issuse a public apology after he plagiarised somebody else's work in an essay for the Guardian and tried to pass it off as his own original thinking?

Steven Carr, Liverpool,

Ok so 2.7 million went to church and 3.5 million shopped online..and according to BBC they had the lions share of the TV viewers with 13 million...so in my estimation that means we do not have any figures for what the other 40 million were doing.....

Really what did 40 million people do on Christmas Day...sit around a piano...

Jim, Oulu, Finland

It was the Christians who hijacked the pagans' mid-winter festival first, so who are they to complain now that the hijack boot is on the other foot? And anyway, surely it's Easter that is "the most important Christian festival of the year"? (The timing of which - springtime -is yet another piece of bare-faced daylight robbery from we secularists!)

Mykl, Kangaroo Point, Australia

Well said Lin ! Totally agree

sujith, london,

So the wishes of 2.7m Christians to celebrate the birth of Christ is irrelevant to secularists like you. I have a suggestion to make. Arrange for yourselves a secular celebration on another day rather than attempt to hijack the most important Christian festival of the year. How about Eid? Have you the courage to suggest such a thing? I doubt it, but like so many secularists you feel safe to dismiss people who have 'peace and goodwill' as a core belief.

Lin, London, UK