Bohemia Village Voice

A Bohemia Road businessman writes (Feb 2010)

Dear Sir,

I wonder how many of your readers feel like me? I won’t have anything to do with Christmas in any way, shape or form. I have felt this way since I was a small boy, but I am not sure that many other people would concur. I would never try to impose my view on anyone else and only raise it here to see how others feel. Usually I just say to people, “Well, I don’t really go in for Christmas you know” and leave it at that, because I know I am never going to change the world. As a successful  parent of three well-balanced adults, I think I did the right thing in placing less emphasis on material things.

I would offer the following comment to all parents. No amount of presents or material things can substitute for what children need more than anything else and that is their parents’ time and their love. When people wake up to this fact we will have solved a big problem in society – that problem being the breakdown of the family unit. It’s not a guarantee for success but we would all prosper from this simple fact. What we need is love – you can’t buy that. I am also appalled at the obscene amounts of money spent on our children when other children in the world are starving.

Bohemia Road businessman (address supplied).

Vic Chalcraft writes (Apr 2010)

Dear Sir,

Just what is your correspondent in his letter headed ‘Christmas’ trying to prove? What sort of childhood did he have that he has from an early age not celebrated Christmas when after all  Christmas is the festival for children? I agree with his view that far too much emphasis these days is placed on material things and commercialism has ruined Christmas as I knew it as a child. How strange he talks of parental love when the basics behind Christmas is the birth of a man who preached love to each other especially to little children. I wonder did he give gifts as tokens of his love to his children and wife at any time? Did he ever buy her a bunch of flowers? Small gifts often silly little things given as tokens of one’s feelings towards another are very much appreciated both in giving and receiving. I suggest he tries it.

Vic Chalcraft, Aldborough Road.