NE: As far as the holiday festivities, the Brits here can correct me if I’m wrong but to the best of my knowledge the whole holiday season seems to be a bigger deal in the UK than in, say, the US. I know I have a (pretty yeshivish) British friend here in sem who was saying yesterday how she misses Christmas. We were a bit, um, okay, and she told us that the festivity is a lot more pervasive and it doesn’t feel so religious. Whether that’s a good thing or not is entirely a different question (Chanukah here in Yerushalayim was phenomenal, if anyone’s interested) but in Harry Potter, Christmastime really does just seem to be a fun couple of days without a trace of religion.
After all, another friend of mine who went to public school talked about having Santa come in elementary school and people just thought it was cute, not overtly religious. She just didn’t go to school those days. It’s probably the kind of thing you can contest but not if you want to have a normal time in that school district through twelfth grade.