I would like to respond to the article: 'Was the Star of Bethlehem real'? Certainly not. Because the Jesus Christ of the gospels could not possibly have been a real person. He is a combination of impossible elements. There may have lived in Palestine, nineteen centuries ago, a man whose name was Jesus, who went about doing good, who was followed by admiring associates, and who in the end met a violent death. But not a line was written when he lived, and of his life and character the world of today knows absolutely nothing.

This Jesus, if he lived, was a man and if he was a reformer, he was but one of many that have lived and died in every age of the world. When the world shall have learned that the Christ of the gospels is a myth, that Christianity is untrue, it will turn its attention from the religious fictions of the past to the vital problems of today, and endeavour to solve them for the improvement of the well-being of the real men and women whom we know, and whom we ought to help and love.

- Diane Gore,

Brown's Town, St. Ann,

I have been following the correspondence in the Gleaner regarding reparations for slavery with keen interest and it occurred to me that there are some different angles from which this whole subject could be viewed, such as: What if a person is half black and half white, does the white part pay the black part reparations?

What if a person is a quarter black, quarter white, quarter Chinese and a quarter Indian, who pays who?

The permutations are limitless. What happens whereby someone who qualifies for reparation is already a multimillionaire, as could well be the case. How much do you pay him or her?

Interestingly, Australia which was founded by convicts from England being unceremoniously dumped on the shores of that hostile land have turned it into the envy of the world.

They are rather proud of the fact that they are the descendants of convicts and you don't hear them asking for reparations.

- James Snead,