YOU may not be Christian, or religious, but if you live in almost any developed country, you will find it hard to get away from Christmas rituals at this time of year. Of course, many of them are secular: where would the holidays be without rampant consumerism, drunken partying, over-indulgence and family feuds? Then there are the rituals whose religious origins have all but faded, such as Santa Claus.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... igion.html
Funded by a research grant from the European Commission, the 'Explaining Religion' (EXREL) project is a three-year interdisciplinary research initiative that seeks to understand both what is universal and cross-culturally variant in religious traditions as well as the cognitive mechanisms that undergird religious thinking and behaviour. EXREL is large-scale and ambitious in scope, integrating the world’s leading centres for psychological, biological, anthropological, and historical research on religion.
http://www.cam.ox.ac.uk/research/explaining-religion/