I’m not a statistician and so not qualified to comment on the quality of the research, but it seems that a recent survey commissioned by The Children’s Society has shown that ‘most people in Britain believe Christmas has become too commercial and would like to return to tradition’.

Reflecting on this, CEO Mark Russell said: “We hear from families who feel that Christmas has become frantic, commercial and disconnected from the things that truly matter. Christingle is a chance to slow down, reconnect, and bring meaning back to the season."

Given this, I hope lots of them will follow the example of the shepherds who took ‘time out’ to examine the angel’s claim that their long-awaited Messiah had been born in a nearby town because they discovered, to their joy the angels were telling the truth.

I’m very much aware that the Christmas story can seem a bit far-fetched. Take ‘angels’ for example. Can we really believe they exist? There’s a lot of evidence to suggest they do. There is the well-known phenomenon called “The Angel of Mons” and there’s Chrissie Chapman’s wonderful testimony too. You can read it in her book “The Night the Angels Came”. When Chapman moved to Burundi in 1990 to open a maternity clinic and dispensary in a rural area of the country, she had no idea that the country would descend into a bitter civil war. When it began, she was living in a rural location on top of a mountain in a healing centre with her adopted children and the health staff. One night when she and the mission director were praying amidst the fighting, she says they saw dozens of angels standing on top of the walls of the healing centre, and she never feared for her life again.

But what about the mind-blowing claim that God became a little baby, a belief that allows us to say that a mother (Mary) was created by her own child? I would find it almost impossible to believe if it wasn’t for the evidence of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. As CS Lewis observed, Jesus was never seen as a great moral teacher because he said and did things that no moral teacher would ever have said and done. We could sum it up by saying He was either ‘mad, bad or God Himself’. The resurrection is proof that He was the One He claimed to be, and the apostle John was right to say that the divine Word became a human being.

We can dismiss it as a fairy tale of course, if we choose to ignore the evidence. The shepherds didn’t and ended up praising God as I hope lots of people will do for the first time this Christmas. We can be sure of one thing though: if God was willing to become an ordinary man to show His love for us, He will certainly help us discover the truth if we’re really looking for it.