I'd like to thank Yvette Bierbaum and Phil McGrath for responding to my letter "Nailing the Myth". I agree with Mr McGrath that you can't write off the most influential man in history, mainly because he's never been written into history. In fact the first Christian documents have nothing to say about the historical Jesus, and the majority of the dubious and self-contradictory gospels were written so long after the event that by no stretch of the imagination could they qualify as the eye-witness accounts Mr McGrath believes them to be. But before this turns into a theological debating club, let me move on to an issue on which many of us will agree: the commercialisation of Christmas.

Christmas is a festival of Mammon during which the rat-race is postponed and we are compelled to enjoy ourselves whether we want to or not. Expensive and often unwanted gifts are exchanged as a ritual duty rather than an expression of affection, which is often a source of great embarrassment for those people who have received a present but have none to give in return. This is because the exchange economy not only fragments society into isolated competitors, but also produces the poisonous ideology of "you don't give or get something for nothing".

And as we think of interesting things to do with the turkey, 800 million people remain severely malnourished or starving. As we watch our children tear into their presents, 40,000 children in poor countries die every day through preventable diseases - the equivalent of dropping a Hiroshima bomb on the poor children of the world every three days. Poverty and famine during a festival of greed and gluttony - is it me, or is there something wrong here?

In fact there is a simple solution to all this, which involves removing the world-owning super-rich 5% from power and giving the other 95% a chance to run the world in a fully participant socialist democracy. As Mr McGrath points out, actions speak louder than words, especially those said in prayer, and I would urge him and his fellow Christians to aspire to this worthy goal.

Neil Windle, Press Officer SPGB, Blades Street, Lancaster