Let me start by saying that I am Muslim. For those who don't know, that means that I am the same religion as terrorists, but calling me that is a stereotype.
In school, or at stores, or even in neighborhoods, you will always hear "Merry Christmas" or Christmas music, or see month early lights in green, red, and white. Other times of the year, it is Halloween and Easter that are brought to light.
First off, winter and fall has more than just Christmas and Halloween. It has Thanksgiving, Hanuka, Kwanzaa, Day of the Dead, and so on. But it pains me to hear fellow classmates say "Christmas Break" instead of "Winter Break". This needs to stop. I get that Christians make up a whole quarter of the world, but that is one quarter out of four. Islam, or Muslims, make up half of Christianity. I could get into the history behind all of this, but I'm still learning it.
What I would like to see in SMITE is a
Nox Hanuka skin, or a 
Camazotz turkey, or even a New Year's 
Cupid. The most progressive thing HiRez has ever done was make a Gay Pride Parade avatar for 1 favor or 1 gem, and Ra'merica's skin kinda black, with a black feel to his voice. These skins would show that HiRez is more concerning about its fan base and is open to new themes that haven't been touched yet.If any of you have a Reddit account, please post this, so it can get some light shed on it. I know that I'm not the only Muslim, or Jew, or even African American person playing this game, but we play it despite the sever lack of culture, and I'd want the rest of the community like myself to stand up and have their collective voice and cultures heard.
Sorry for the rant. Have a nice day. Comment your religion and race if it's other than white and Christian/Catholic.
Also, don't go to Reddit with this, please. Reddit hates us already and this is pretty salty-sounding. If there's anywhere to take this, it would be Tumblr.
Because we have a ton of builds on here that are absolutely terrible.
And we are seen as a bad site mainly cause anyone can make a build and everyone can see it. It is not regulated and can only be edited by the owner themselves. If persay a build is bad but gets more publicity and comes onto the front page or becomes top guide of the god, it can be seen by newer people as "Oh this guide has more views and upvotes and others and therefore it must be good". It still happens actually. Just because of that reason Reddit dislikes us to the point of downvoting everyone who remotely THINKS that we are a good website.
So, I can imagine that you're feeling overwhelmed with seemingly Christian traditions, but nowadays Christmas in particular is only very loosely related to its actual religious roots- it has become more of an international holiday which purpose undeniably is attractive to vast majority of people; to spend time with family (aspecially if it can't be done on everyday's basis), enjoy gifts, festive food etc.
To be honest, you probably won't see that much of Jesus in the shops, but more of the Santa Claus rather as an effect of general commercialisation; and even I myself know some atheist people who enjoy Christmas time. Come to think of it, Jesus probably wasn't even born during this time; it was just the Church trying to take over various pagan solstice celebrations.
About Halloween; I'd say it actually isn't Christian at all- as some of the more traditional priests will even say that it's a "pagan holiday"; it's more or less associated with various celebrations similar to Day of the Dead, originating even back to Celtic druids who would scare away "evil spirits". And as always, people found ways to enjoy this time without having much care where did it come from- it's fun for children, favorable for trade; a win-win situation.
About Hi-Rez, and actually more companies not having that much interest in other religions' holidays- to me it'd appear (but correct me if I'm wrong here), that religions as Islam and Judaism are in general more traditional; having more care about their beliefs- so it would be harder to invent ways into presenting them for the wider group of recipients, and not hurt their followers in the process.
To that the fact of some well known radical religious organisations is not helping much; I absolutely know that people from let's say ISIS do not represent the typical Muslim's beliefs. But there's a caricature of Jesus in the internet used in many memes, and I don't think it has caused any murders from Christians so far:
Yet, regardless of how much provocative and immature was that, some people who drew caricatures of Mahomet (I think it's pronounced that way) were killed not that long ago; beginning of 2015 was it?
So regardless of how radical such action might have been, some more stereotypes were born- and trying to do something, even with a good will, with Islamic beliefs may be considered taboo of a kind currently.
And hey, about skins in Smite in particular; i'd say we have at least some already;
Is it enough? Probably not, but it's something already. I'd personally like to see more variety of skin themes in Smite, wouldn't even think about having anything against it, lul. I'm white and Christian too but equality is a thing everyone deserves. And hey, it's good you decided to write this post, opened ways for some conversation at least, didn't it?
Also want to throw this out there...this is/was called the Trinity Broadcasting Network, an Evangelical TV show and location minutes from my home...around the holidays, besides the entire location being lit up like a hippie at the Burning Man, they have "Happy Birthday Jesus" on top of the building for all to see from the freeway...(made me think of this when you mentioned Christmas isn't even Jesus' birthday, lol).
@Papps, I think you get the gist of what type of person I am. I want to use that as a reminder to help (maybe) enforce what I'm going to say.
My initial reaction was to cringe when I read "this pisses me off." Now look, I don't mean that against you, per se. Mostly, I dislike conflict, and just wish everyone got along. (*note to self*, then why do I play SMITE?!? lol) If you want to call me a preacher, I preach tolerance and understanding. Yes, I will clarify understanding in that sense as wishing people with the conflict would have more understanding. With that specifically in mind, I'll refer back to many of the things Daelinn said, and also point out that you need to sort of consider tradition. If there's any type of religion connected with the US, founding and up, it's Christianity, right? Since it hasn't gotten targeted for a purge, it's not surprising to see that it's still influential. Since you live in the U.S., I have to assume you see exactly what Daelinn says about Christmas. If you take a step back, I hope it gives you a bit of perspective.
Now, in order to be fair and honest, I do need to say that knowing (for the first time) that you're Muslim, means that you've probably gone through some horrible **** that you really shouldn't have to...especially in the current times. For you to say that your religion is the same as terrorists is doing yourself a huge disservice. That's juuuuust a bit like saying those Trinity Broadcasting Evangelists are the same as Baptists. Hell naw.
I'm like...5th gen Japanese-American. My grandparents didn't even speak Japanese, and they and other relatives were all put into the internment camps. My grandpa and other relatives fought in WWII for the U.S., serving in the 442nd. Yet my parents, going to a high school in Southern California, still were told "hey, who won the war, Jap?" by whites. I can't stay that I was bullied, but I definitely felt a difference between myself and others.
It's likely way worse for you, when it happens. And I feel for you, and it's wrong, and because you experience these things, I can't really say I blame you for "getting pissed." This country is best when its various people come together. But damn if it isn't difficult because ****py people will always be around, and we're all human...it's tough to just deflect the negative things over and over.
Where the hell am I going with this? I don't know. I guess I just like to talk. (Shut up Zero) But I'll just finish by saying that on behalf of cool people (I'm totally cool), I hope you don't stay pissed for long, and I apologize for all the ****py people, since they won't do it themselves. Does that work?
To clarify, I'm not saying that anger towards members of our community will be constructive (I'm trying to be very careful that my words are not misconstrued by someone into thinking that that's what I'm stating). However I can't really agree when Bran says that you should essentially calm down when a social problem like this upsets you. Those feelings are legitimate and shouldn't be quashed just to make other people more comfortable, especially if they're among those helping perpetuate the issue.
Now, if the target purpose of these actions were to specifically alienate specific peoples/religions, then yes...but that's not the case here, at least as far as I can tell (anyone know the Hi-Rez people and know if they're racist?).
Now, the recent police activities toward specific people, some Trump supporters' targeting whole groups of people with generalities, and other direct horrible things...that's a different story.
I forgot about those skins, but to me, isn't really enough. Also, the spanish ones are
Lastly, I'm not blaming HiRez. I'm just saying that they could be doing better. Raynday recently got hired by them, so their in the right direction. Their's a black guy and a female in the SPL, and a full African team, or so I've heard. Like overld1 said, this year hasn't been good to my people. With Trump's Muslim allegations, and the Black Lives Matter movement, at least HiRez should note this and try to do something with this.
What skins do you, or any one else for that matter, want to see? For who?
In my country (in a galaxy far, far away) we have a holiday on 1st of November similar to Day of the Dead; people are visiting graves, leaving festive candles there before going home together to have a meal. So as you can imagine, a few days before shops are filled with candles of all kinds. And now it's the best part- as soon as the holiday is over, that is 3rd of November, all you can find from this time on in every market and store are chocolate Santas.
So if anyone is "to blame" regarding the absolute excess of Christmas themes, that'd be the trade industry- because official Christian "preparations" do not start before December.
Not to the actual post. I'm spiritist, but still Christian. We do have our own ""pagan"" holidays while we also have all of christianities' holidays. Pretty much being a Umbanda spiritist (Don't try to search Umbanda. You would need to research a **** ton about African religions and then you'd need to research how they ended up in Brazil and how it got adapted and how does it falls under Spiritism). means that every Friday is almost like a holiday! But to the literal of the word, Holy Day. Friday for Umbanda Spirists like myself is Oxalá's (A.K.A Jesus) day, so we have to use white clothes. I dunno if you know this, but here in Brazil it's a tradition to "jump 7 waves" in the New Years. That is a Umbanda/Candomblé Spiritism tradition. Also that the colors of your clothes shows what you want in the next year, also Spiritism costumes widely accepted.
Now for their skins, I don't really mind them, but I do agree it's annoying Christmas talking during November. My birthday is in this marvelous month but all I hear is XMAS XMAS XMAS and not MY BFF'S BDAY OMGGG. Yeah.
but yeah, that was about it.
~Without any harm intended and with much much much love,
Prism
EDIT: Also I'm Bisexual and the best part about my religion is that it doesn't care who you love, who you have the hots for, or whatever. So YAY! Also being a medium is pretty cool.
About the Gay icon... If you think that was the most "progressive" thing HiRez done it's quite wrong. They sympathize every time there's a terrorist attack, and A LOT of their employees are LGBTQ+
Like on the one hand, if it was accomplished and they pulled it off without offending anybody that would be amazing, but we all know the likelihood of them even attempting to do that is pretty minimal.