Sir, – The following paragraph from Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol is used in the Christmas television advertisement for a well-known Irish retail chain: "He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure".
If readers who have seen the advertisement think it seems slightly different that is because the references to going to church and interacting with beggars have been left out. It is interesting to see what the company presumably felt shouldn’t be mentioned in the context of a modern Irish Christmas. – Yours, etc,
JACK MONTGOMERY,
Blackrock,
Dundalk,
Co Louth.