From Coln Booth, Ventnor:

Who makes the decisions regarding school term dates? Krampus?

It was an awful, cloth-eared, indefensible decision to take away a week of the children's summer and tack it onto a useless October break, when the weather is usually terrible.

Now we have our little ones breaking up for school on December 22. This despite new suggestions by the education chiefs that schools should break up on the 17th.

The build up to Christmas is a special time, one I would think any decent parent should cherish, yet our children's first day off school is the day before Christmas Eve.

Why are they going back to school for the 21st and 22nd (a Monday and Tuesday) when they should be at home enjoying some classic Christmas films like Elf, The Polar Express, The Muppet Christmas Carol, and Die Hard.

They should be opening our eggnog for us when we start to feel a bit off-balance (so about 11am onwards), and wrapping presents for family so poorly you just know they'll have to be re-wrapped on Christmas Eve.

At age five and six, our precious kids are missing out on so much festive fun times. And they don't even get a full two week break, only 12 days including weekends.

The people who made these decisions hate children. They hate fun. They despise laughter and joy.

They are the Grinches and Mrs Claus's sister (Anti-Claus) of the festive season.

They chew humbugs and they want to stuff our Christmas trees up the chimney and dump them from Mount Crumpit.

To those who have ensured our holiday season has become a holiday mini-series, how about you leave Christmas alone, and decrease the surplus population of sourpuss Scrooges.

Don't let the cotton-headed ninnymuggins win!