The Nordic nations have a tradition of much, much stronger labour unions and Social Democratic governments that actually care about the lives of ordinary workers.
So it has been one of the clear political goals of the unions and Social Democratic parties to increase the citizenry's time off from work.
Rich people has always taken time of, since they can afford it, but even poor workers need time for rest, recuperation and to enjoy life.
These goals have been achieved in several different way:
1). National laws regulating the right to vacation for every worker in the nation. Sweden got it's first week of vacation regulated by national law in 1939, and that has since increased to at least 4 weeks paid vacation per year for every citizen.
2). The strong labour unions have in negotiations with the their employer counterparts struck deals increasing workers compensation for overtime and other aspects of work that have increased their vacation time or -pay beyond the national law.
3). By law a number of national holidays have been instituted. Besides May 1, which is the International Workers' Day when unions and Socialist demonstrate to show their strength and solidarity with each other, and National days, almost all of these are religious in nature as you say.
This is simply because choosing these days weakened the political opposition from the political right when they where instituted.
The right, who traditionally was aligned with the church, had a harder time objecting to people getting time of so they could observe religious holidays - which was the offical reason for instituting the holidays.
The church obviously sided with the labour movement and the Social Democratic parties in support of instituting these holidays, and employers objecting to these holidays had to explain why they where against people observing religious holidays.
So it was simply smart politics mostly.
And even if the Nordic countries where more religious at the time these holidays where instituted, it's still the case that people knew full well that giving workers a day of didn't mean they HAD to spend it going to church.
But they would still get the day of - which was the important thing for the unions and the Social Democrats.
That the holidays are ONLY Christian is simply because at the time they where instituted the population in the Nordic countries where almost exclusively not only Christian, but specifically Protestant. We had some very small populations of Jews and a few Catholics, but by far the absolute majority of the population was Protestant Christians and they all observed the same religious holidays.
In comparison, the labour unions in the US have always been very weak and the US is the only western nation without a major political party tracing it's roots to Socialism.
Which is why the US is also the only western nations without universal healthcare and their labour and vacation laws are crap compared to ours.
Concerning religious classes in school, the Nordic's didn't use to be as secularised as they are now - but we still have a long tradition of universal education.
In Sweden, the first law instituting national mandatory schools was passed in 1842 and besides reading, writing and some basic arithmetic the most important subject at that time was Christianity. Millions of Swedish (and Nordic) pupils have spent years learning about the Bible - which was often the first book they ever learned to read from.
The church had a strong influence at the time and as I said before, the Nordic countries where almost exclusively Protestant Christian so the pressure for everyone to become "good Protestants" where very strong.
And as the church was aligned with the political right the teachings was also very much that people should learn to respect and obey God, the King, and their "betters" (as in rich people) - in that order.
Now when the political left grew in strength and eventually came into power, they wanted to break this stronghold on religious education. It was not only seen as wasting valuable education time teaching children about religious fairy stories that could better be used to teach them more valuable subjects, but also undemocratic as the old education had also been intended to make people loyal subjects and not independent individuals.
So the importance of the school subject of Christianity was lessened over time as fewer and fewer hours where spent on it.
But it wasn't until 1969 the name was changed to Religious Study and the curriculum expanded to the study of ALL the worlds major religions - not only Christianity.
When I went to school in the 80's and 90's we actually read more about other religions then Christianity as it was felt that pupils could more easily educate themselves in Christianity on their free time if they really wanted.
In comparison I can say that I just came home after spending Christmas Eve with among others my uncle. He's 81 and was, during his time in school in the 40's and 50's, forced to spend thousands of hours studying Christianity - something he's still annoyed about these many decades later.
He's a mathematician and he's often complained about having to waste all that time learning a lot of old stories that he feels haven't been of any use what so ever to him. He still knows a lot of these things by heart since it was drilled into the pupils of the time in the rural area where he grew up, and his experience is - I believe - one of the reasons behind Sweden quick secularisation these past decades.
Most people where so feed up being force feed Christianity in school growing up, they gladly rejected it as soon as they had a chance and certainly didn't want to see it forced on their own children the way it was on them.
We still have Christians of course, but very few fundamentalists - and they keep to themselves.
They've learnt that the majority of Swedes will accept them believing what ever they do - but we won't allow them forcing their views on the rest of us.
In comparison the US was never as religiously monolithic as the Nordic countries, and the nation was of course founded on the expressed principle of religious freedom - which of course made the teaching of any one religion in school impossible.
"In some big important ways, homogeneous Western Europe now does pluralism far better than The Great American Melting Pot. "
Well, I'd say in many aspects the other western nations are ahead of the US.
We've already had our religious battles, we've already accepted Socialism as just another political movement and we've moved on.
While in the US ultra-conservative forces are still fighting to control everyone else and the ultra-rich to own everyone else.
0
@JOL
The answer is political.
The Nordic nations have a tradition of much, much stronger labour unions and Social Democratic governments that actually care about the lives of ordinary workers.
So it has been one of the clear political goals of the unions and Social Democratic parties to increase the citizenry's time off from work.
Rich people has always taken time of, since they can afford it, but even poor workers need time for rest, recuperation and to enjoy life.
These goals have been achieved in several different way:
1). National laws regulating the right to vacation for every worker in the nation. Sweden got it's first week of vacation regulated by national law in 1939, and that has since increased to at least 4 weeks paid vacation per year for every citizen.
2). The strong labour unions have in negotiations with the their employer counterparts struck deals increasing workers compensation for overtime and other aspects of work that have increased their vacation time or -pay beyond the national law.
3). By law a number of national holidays have been instituted. Besides May 1, which is the International Workers' Day when unions and Socialist demonstrate to show their strength and solidarity with each other, and National days, almost all of these are religious in nature as you say.
This is simply because choosing these days weakened the political opposition from the political right when they where instituted.
The right, who traditionally was aligned with the church, had a harder time objecting to people getting time of so they could observe religious holidays - which was the offical reason for instituting the holidays.
The church obviously sided with the labour movement and the Social Democratic parties in support of instituting these holidays, and employers objecting to these holidays had to explain why they where against people observing religious holidays.
So it was simply smart politics mostly.
And even if the Nordic countries where more religious at the time these holidays where instituted, it's still the case that people knew full well that giving workers a day of didn't mean they HAD to spend it going to church.
But they would still get the day of - which was the important thing for the unions and the Social Democrats.
That the holidays are ONLY Christian is simply because at the time they where instituted the population in the Nordic countries where almost exclusively not only Christian, but specifically Protestant. We had some very small populations of Jews and a few Catholics, but by far the absolute majority of the population was Protestant Christians and they all observed the same religious holidays.
In comparison, the labour unions in the US have always been very weak and the US is the only western nation without a major political party tracing it's roots to Socialism.
Which is why the US is also the only western nations without universal healthcare and their labour and vacation laws are crap compared to ours.
Concerning religious classes in school, the Nordic's didn't use to be as secularised as they are now - but we still have a long tradition of universal education.
In Sweden, the first law instituting national mandatory schools was passed in 1842 and besides reading, writing and some basic arithmetic the most important subject at that time was Christianity. Millions of Swedish (and Nordic) pupils have spent years learning about the Bible - which was often the first book they ever learned to read from.
The church had a strong influence at the time and as I said before, the Nordic countries where almost exclusively Protestant Christian so the pressure for everyone to become "good Protestants" where very strong.
And as the church was aligned with the political right the teachings was also very much that people should learn to respect and obey God, the King, and their "betters" (as in rich people) - in that order.
Now when the political left grew in strength and eventually came into power, they wanted to break this stronghold on religious education. It was not only seen as wasting valuable education time teaching children about religious fairy stories that could better be used to teach them more valuable subjects, but also undemocratic as the old education had also been intended to make people loyal subjects and not independent individuals.
So the importance of the school subject of Christianity was lessened over time as fewer and fewer hours where spent on it.
But it wasn't until 1969 the name was changed to Religious Study and the curriculum expanded to the study of ALL the worlds major religions - not only Christianity.
When I went to school in the 80's and 90's we actually read more about other religions then Christianity as it was felt that pupils could more easily educate themselves in Christianity on their free time if they really wanted.
In comparison I can say that I just came home after spending Christmas Eve with among others my uncle. He's 81 and was, during his time in school in the 40's and 50's, forced to spend thousands of hours studying Christianity - something he's still annoyed about these many decades later.
He's a mathematician and he's often complained about having to waste all that time learning a lot of old stories that he feels haven't been of any use what so ever to him. He still knows a lot of these things by heart since it was drilled into the pupils of the time in the rural area where he grew up, and his experience is - I believe - one of the reasons behind Sweden quick secularisation these past decades.
Most people where so feed up being force feed Christianity in school growing up, they gladly rejected it as soon as they had a chance and certainly didn't want to see it forced on their own children the way it was on them.
We still have Christians of course, but very few fundamentalists - and they keep to themselves.
They've learnt that the majority of Swedes will accept them believing what ever they do - but we won't allow them forcing their views on the rest of us.
In comparison the US was never as religiously monolithic as the Nordic countries, and the nation was of course founded on the expressed principle of religious freedom - which of course made the teaching of any one religion in school impossible.
"In some big important ways, homogeneous Western Europe now does pluralism far better than The Great American Melting Pot. "
Well, I'd say in many aspects the other western nations are ahead of the US.
We've already had our religious battles, we've already accepted Socialism as just another political movement and we've moved on.
While in the US ultra-conservative forces are still fighting to control everyone else and the ultra-rich to own everyone else.