I'm sure they're not changing has nothing to do with religion or regions or anything like that. It's likely the same reason you still have to burn alloy points one click at a time...it'd require effort on their part to make a change and that ain't happening. Besides, they're likely all out for the end of the year anyhow and it'll be on auto-pilot til january. It's a US based company so they're all going to be burning end of year vacation around the holiday's here.
Hell, SWTOR was MUCH worse. They'd drop an exansion mind december, rife with bugs, then take off 2-3 weeks for the end of the year and people had to deal with the bugs til they got back. Consider us lucky that's just a conquest start day in question here and not new content! :)
What does pushing it back a week get you anyhow? Jan 1 is a much wider holiday than christmas. And, names notwithstanding, most parts of the world have 'a' holiday around the same time. Part of the reason why a small subset of in the US get upset when you say 'Happy Holidays' instead of Merry Christmas and Happy New year.