Readers on seasonal greetings, or the lack of them, alternative Christmas trees and the nativity in our time

Helen Cullen urges us to keep sending Christmas cards (Opinion, 18 December). My greatest gift is a letter card from my father when I was a year old, Christmas 1944, from Belgium after he survived the D-day landings. He tells me to play with my dolls and says he knows “Mammy does not like the snow!” Each year I take it out and read it. Memories cherished.

Jean Jackson

Seer Green, Buckinghamshire

• There’s a danger Christmas cards will go the way traditional carols are going. I haven’t heard one yet this Christmas. Are they too embarrassing?

Rowena Rowlands

Wigan

• My multicultural street contains all the world’s major religions. I noticed that the first three cards we received were from Muslim and Jewish households.

Nova Brockbank

Newcastle upon Tyne

• Reading Fiona Gomersall’s letter (15 December) reminded me of my childhood in rural Derbyshire. We would cut the top off a suitably pointed holly bush, put it in a hole in a log, and take it indoors to be decorated on Christmas Eve. Taken down, it would be dry and used on our only open fire in the black leaded range. The original bush would carry on growing.

Anne Whittaker

Wirksworth, Derbyshire

• We decorate our 25-year-old weeping fig, which is a bit dusty and threadbare but does the job. And lots of the decorations are well over 25 years old.

Judy Roberts

Menai Bridge, Anglesey

• It was only evasive action, first by the visitors from the east, who kept the authorities in the dark, and then by Joseph who fled with Mary and the baby Jesus to seek asylum, that kept the family alive. A story re-enacted every day around the Middle East, often because of wars Europeans have armed. How wonderful, then, to hear that Europeans can still act with kindness (Dutch church service to halt family’s deportation heads for its 60th day, 22 December). It is a Christmas story for today.

David Murray

Wallington, Surrey

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