IIN to ask close friends to be god parents if you aren't religious?

You mean why is the British spelling "honour" instead of "honor" as it is the USA?

That's largely due to a guy named Noah Webster who produced the first American dictionary nearly 200 years ago. Before that, he published "spellers" for use in primary schools. In the early 1800s, there were multiple acceptable spellings for many words in both American and British English, but Webster picked the ones he thought were most sensible. It was also a nationalist thing: Webster wanted American spelling to be different to the most common British usage. So humour/humor, fibre/fiber, defence/defense, etc.

Because of snobbery about "Americanisms" in Britain, British publishers settled on spellings that were opposite to what Webster chose.

So it's just a trivial example of the petty stupidity that follows from the usual my-dick-is-bigger-than-yours nationalism.