A SIX-YEAR-OLD girl performed the important task of lighting one of the North-East's biggest Christmas trees yesterday.

Esther Bancroft performed the symbolic lighting of a candle, which triggered the illumination of all 1,500 lights on the 26ft Norwegian spruce at Durham Cathedral.

Accompanied by the Dean of Durham, the Very Reverend Michael Sadgrove, Esther, the daughter of the cathedral's former education officer, Alison Bancroft, led a procession featuring the cathedral choir down the nave to the tree.

Hundreds of people, including many families with young children, gathered round the tree to witness the lighting and the blessing of the crib.

Esther, a pupil at St Godric's Primary School in Durham, performed her role perfectly after an earlier run-through of proceedings.

The dean welcomed the congregation and described the service as "one of the most magical of all events" at the cathedral, adding that Christmas "brings out the child in each of us". Before and after the service, members of the public placed gifts round the foot of the tree, to be collected by the Salvation Army, today for distribution to needy children in time for Christmas.

Elsewhere around the region, fears of a pre-Christmas washout for retailers proved unfounded as shoppers hit the streets in the North-East.

Despite fears that shops would have to cut prices to attract shoppers, most said sales were at least on a par with this time last year, although the picture was mixed across the region.

Albion Small, manager of Darlington's Cornmill Centre, said: "It's about the same as last year in terms of sales and footfall - the number of visitors we have.

"There are some stores with special offers, but generally most are holding on until after Christmas and are not panicking."

Mr Small said that a rush was expected at the end of the week and singled out HMV, booksellers Ottakar's, Phones 4U and The Perfume Shop as doing particularly well.

One store, Music Zone, in Darlington's Queen Street shopping arcade, said it had a record weekend.

David Grant, of Music Zone, said: "We took over £10,000 on Saturday, which was the most we've ever seen in sales in two and-a-half years here.

"Today, although it's a Sunday, it's been very busy as well. People are absolutely flying in and out and we are selling a lot of books, CDs and even more DVDs."

Mark Leadbitter, manager of Littlewoods in Middlesbrough's Cleveland Centre, said: "It's been a fairly steady weekend, busier than the usual weekend obviously."

Jayne Holmes, a spokeswoman for Gateshead's Metro Centre, said: "We're on about 61,000 visitors today compared with 81,000 last year.

"On Saturday, we had 99,000 visitors compared with 104,000 last year so we're still pretty busy.

"The significant thing for us is that Christmas falls on a Saturday this year, which means we still have five full days of shopping to go."

Meanwhile, Santa did not need his sleigh or his reindeer on hand when he paid the first of a series of flying visits to the Yorkshire Air Museum.

After landing on the airfield at Elvington, near York, he hitched a lift in a 38-ton airport fire tender to his unusual grotto at the museum.

Instead of a snow-speckled cave his temporary home there is the cargo-deck of the museum's Handley Page Herald aircraft, suitably fitted out with decorations and lights.

Santa spent the weekend in his airliner grotto and will be back there on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

To book to meet Santa, contact (01904) 608719 or (01904) 608595. Tickets cost £4 for adults and £4 for children and include admission to the rest of the museum.