I should like to endorse the seasonal sentiments expressed by your correspondent Bill Williams (E/A 17/12).

Bill states that this is the time to ‘celebrate the greatest person to appear on our planet’. The person in question is mysteriously unidentified – but perhaps we can guess.

From our earliest childhood almost all of us were taught that centuries ago a babe was born in humble circumstances, who in adulthood, would change the lives of all mankind.

I assume that Bill refers to Isaac Newton?

Isaac Newton was indeed born on Christmas Day in 1642, on a modest farm in Woolsthorpe- by-Colsterworth in Lincolnshire. This birth date became January 4, 1643, after the change to the Gregorian calendar in 1752.

I fully agree with Bill, that if we accept the work of Newton as symbolic of the scientific worldview, endeavouring to free humankind from the long shadow of religious superstition, then December 25 is indeed a time for celebration.

Even as the Christian church with its pagan rituals, celebrates the winter solstice and the return of the sun. Happy Solstice.

Larry Wright Burford Avenue Swindon