SIR: As I write this it is only September, but yet again most of us have already been sickened to the core by the progressively early start to the Christmas shopping fiasco.

I love Christmas as much as anyone, but I'm getting fed up at being on the receiving end of pre-Christmas hype three and a half months before the event.

It's all well and good to say Bolton must compete for trade with Manchester and other towns. Compete for what?

In fact Bolton is competing in seeing how much pressure it can put on the shopper. Many of them, the young and the poor.

How many low-income families are being targeted and buying things they cannot really afford through three months of the big sell?

Do the shopkeepers and promotors and all the other 'hangers on' who prosper from this fiasco, really care about these people? Of course they don't.

The only thing this pre-Christmas hype is about is money. Or defined more clearly, profit.

Bolton has a duty to its own people first and foremost. That duty should include preventing people being exploited by the hard sell treatment.

I say ban the Christmas hype until December - and keep Christmas special. It's stale already.

After all, Christmas is supposed to celebrate Christianity not capitalism!

G Baxter

Bromwich Street, Bolton

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.