I WAS encouraged to read a little of Dr David Hope's Christmas message to Evening Press readers (December 24). His comment about politically-correct attempts to "dumb down" Christmas is exactly what is happening.

There are so many signs of celebration of some sort around us, but what is it? Where in the shops could we find cards reflecting the real meaning of this celebration, much less the name of the one born Saviour, King Of Kings?

Even our own Evening Press had the headline, "Xmas baby 'gift'" (December 27). Where is the Christ in Xmas?

Jesus doesn't ask us to embrace other gods, for He who is the Word, as John Young reminds us in his excellent article, "Christ in Christmas" (December 24), said: "Thou shalt have no other gods beside me."

When a nation becomes post-Christian, and embraces all the tenets of Humanism and other faiths, we are on a slippery slope to disaster.

Carol Parker,

Ashley Park Crescent, York.

...IN his Christmas message, Canon John Young writes that "a huge wall is snaking its way across the West Bank" (December 24).

Unfortunately Canon Young is mistaken - it is not a wall at all, but a fence. Only approximately four per cent of Israel's security barrier is wall, and this is only where it runs next to a major highway - to stop Palestinian snipers taking pot-shots at Israeli cars.

The remaining 96 per cent of the security barrier is a three-metre high fence, designed, as Canon Young correctly points out, to stop suicide bombers entering Israel and murdering innocent civilians.

If there was a guaranteed end to Palestinian terrorism, construction of the security barrier would never have been necessary.

But, unfortunately, without a viable partner for peace in Yasser Arafat's Palestinian authority, Israel is left with little choice but to protect its civilians.

Hugo Bieber,

James College,

University of York.

Updated: 09:56 Tuesday, December 30, 2003