No room for Jesus on the square

Sir,

You quote a Nicosia Municipality official as saying the Christmas crib had this year had to be moved from Eleftheria Square to the moat “due to a lack of space on the square” (‘Taking the Christ out of Christmas’, December 24).

So let me get my head around this: there’s space on the square to (illegally) park two cars with grotesque Santas in them, there’s space for a toy town house advertising an oil company, and there’s space for a multicoloured herd of plaster moufflon; but there’s no room for the baby Jesus…

Déjà-vu? “She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.” Vaguely familiar, or are our friends at town hall so busy securing sponsors for Christmas that they have forgotten the words of Luke’s Gospel?

Pavlos Michaelides, Nicosia

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.