YES

Kevin Alexander, a 22-year-old York father of two loves the festive season... just look at his house!

NO

Feature writer STEPHEN LEWIS turns in to the Grinch Who Stole Christmas and says: Bah, humbug!

Kevin Alexander: I HAVE always loved Christmas. It has been a magical time to me since I was little. When I was a youngster, I would go to bed early on Christmas Eve and was told to go to sleep or Father Christmas wouldn't come. But I would stay up and look out of the window for him.

My dad used to come home from the night shift he worked at British Sugar at six in the morning on Christmas Day, and pretend to be Father Christmas.

He got us up and we would come down for our presents. But I always knew it was my dad and not the real Father Christmas.

One year, I got a police car, and the lights worked and the doors opened. The policeman came out with guns in his hand. That got played with a lot - we have still got it now.

I went to Carr Junior School. Every year we would put on a play for Christmas. I remember once we did Jack And The Beanstalk and I played one of the bailiffs and was booed and hissed. Father Christmas would also visit every year.

During the holiday I would go to the field near our house most days and play football with some friends. I used to go shopping with my mum to buy Christmas presents for my three sisters. I'd get them dolls and pushchairs. Nowadays we buy for the children - I have two of my own, Ryan, two and one-year-old Kalam, plus two nieces and two nephews between the ages of two and five.

All Ryan wants for Christmas is a bike. They know about Father Christmas. When we pull up outside my mum and dad's house in Jute Road, both of them will jump up because of the lights and then they see Santa. My sister and I have been decorating the outside of the house like this for about five years. It takes about two weeks to complete. Mum and dad like it. People come up for a look. Sometimes they pull up at midnight. It's a tourist attraction.

It's nice that people come and take a look. When kids see it, it gets them into the spirit of Christmas.

I like a very traditional Christmas. It's a good day, something to look forward to.

This year I will be at home with the kids for Christmas dinner, and then we will go visiting the rest of the family, taking our presents. Then we watch the Queen's speech. It's a ritual.

The turkey usually hangs around for days - there's always loads of it left.

For me Christmas is all about the family. It was magical for me as a child and now it is magical for me as a dad.

Stephen Lewis: DON'T say Merry Christmas to me, you smirking, simpering nincompoop! If I never hear another Christmas Carol or see another Christmas light again, it'll be far too soon.

And don't send me a Christmas card either. Humbug, the lot of it. There's no more peace and goodwill around now than at any other time of year - and that isn't very much. You're all just pretending, and you know it: simpering at each other in public and back at home wearily scrawling the same platitudes on a pile of Christmas cards the height of the Eiffel Tower just because you feel you've got to.

"Oh, dear!" I hear you moan. "We've had a Christmas card from that couple we met on holiday, and we didn't send them one. What will we do?" Feel glad, you idiot - you didn't like them anyway. What's the point of pretending to be nice to people just because it's December 25? People aren't nice, they're horrible. Stuff and nonsense, the lot of it.

It's all a tinselly, pre-packaged, claustrophic plot to con us into forking out piles of dosh for rubbish we'd never dream of buying at any other time of year. Shopping? Activity for idiots. Never do it myself - legs turn to jelly as soon as I set foot in a department store.

Christmas carols are bad enough but when Charlotte Church is singing them it sounds like a cat being strangled.

Christmas dinner? Bah! Who needs it? Turkey's dry, sprouts are soggy and the value mince pies from the shop down the road taste like moon dust. Had 'em once as a sprog, and they nearly choked me.

Haven't got any sprogs myself, luckily. So no whining about Father Christmas in this house, thank God, and no little blighters moping around hoping the latest plastic radio-controlled dog that does handsprings and balances on its nose will be delivered on the big day.

If any of the little beggars try knocking on my door to sing a Christmas carol I'll give 'em what for. And if the neighbour dares to try and poke his nose in, pretending to wish me many happy returns when all he really wants is a good snoop around, he'll wish he hadn't. Many happy returns! What does it mean, anyway? It's all nonsense. Just leave me alone, the lot of you, and stop pretending to be so dam' happy and lovey-dovey.

Hullo? Who's this coming down the chimney? Some fat wallah with a big beard dressed all in red. Be off with you! Go on! Don't try to smile at me, you nincompoop! Get out!

And don't try showing your face around here again...