Sir – Roger Moreton wonders why shops do not play carols at Easter (Letters, January 16). I imagine they believe carols are only for Christmas and do not realise their origins as spring fertility dances.

The celebrations were originally for Eostre, the pagan — ie rural — goddess of spring, before they spread to other seasonal festivals.

The only way Christianity could be imposed on an illiterate population in the sixth century was for the familiar seasonal celebrations and rituals to be slightly tweaked, with a spot of symbolism and a change of words. At the winter solstice, welcoming the return of the sun became welcoming the arrival of the Light of the World and in the springtime, the renewal of life from the dead earth became the crucifixion and resurrection. It was the 19th-century hymn writers and the 20th-century “Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols” which made carols synonymous in most people’s minds with Christmas and religious words. Christmas songs (Rudolf etc) are usually American with secular or pseudo-religious words. (Essential in American schools, where nothing religious can be taught — or sung).

As it is, if companies realised their loud music sends a lot of us screaming out of their shops and that future claims from deaf shop assistants might eventually cost them money, they might think twice about assaulting our ears, whatever the season. Anyone care to join me in a fertility dance around Debenhams?

Margaret Bulleyment, Steeple Aston