I WAS disappointed to read in the Oxford Mail (September 29) that the city council has refused to allow a Christmas market on Broad Street.

The Christmas market at the Castle has been, since it started a few years back, a truly lovely event to look forward to and something to add a little festive cheer and spirit to a season that, quite frankly, now seems over-run by gaudiness and over commercialism.

Strolling down through the lovely, little stalls, doing a little last- minute Christmas shopping at craft stalls, the delightful fragrance of roasted nuts and mulled wine in the frosty air – it’s Christmas as it should be.

I fail to see how those stalls even begin to threaten city traders as the goods they provide are so different. The council has once again proven itself to be without vision for our fair city – quelle surprise !

Perhaps one of the enlightened ones could explain to me why places like Bruges or Avignon can have Christmas markets from early December, sometimes until mid- January, and this with no traders’ objections?

A beautiful historic city like Oxford needs, nay, deserves a decent little Christmas market but I guess some people are simply too short-sighted to accept that.

I guess it’s off to Bath and its Christmas market for my husband and me when December comes.

A few weeks a year, can’t we be given something a little magical and special to celebrate what will have been, for most people, a rather miserable and difficult year?

I would like to thank the organisers of the Christmas market for having brought a little loveliness in a season usually fraught with ugliness and screaming, glaring commercialism.

CASSANDRA BARRINGTON-HARNESS

Address withheld