• ANNE Cargill, taking issue with my antipathy towards religion, assumes I will not be celebrating Christmas, (The power of prayer is not to be understated, December 10).

Well, in the way she might understand it, of course not.

However I certainly will be marking the midwinter, Saturnalia, the Festival of the Unconquered Sun, and all the other traditions of this time of year.

It’s obvious why, in primitive cultures, (when people had little understanding of planetary systems and seasons) they should – almost universally – have had a festival at the time when the disappearing sun “turned round” and came back to provide our planet with life for another year.

Inventors of later mythologies, such as Christianity, naturally tagged their stories on to existing, widespread, festivals to give them some resonance. That’s why Christmas is when it is, of course.

I hope others, like me, will pause briefly just after 10am next Monday, the time of the moment of solstice, both in awe at the wonders of our universe, and also with an awareness of what our species has achieved in our mathematical and scientific ability to understand and analyse those wonders.

An awareness which renders primitive superstitions, such as Christianity, obsolete.

ALBERT BEALE
Little Russell Street, WC1