The mystery of Christmas is a central mystery of the faith, and it is one for which children have a special affinity. The secular Christmas season focuses on children, but it has always been a children’s feast, with boy bishops on St Nicholas’s Day, presents and the child in the crib.
This opportunity to communicate the faith to children is not neglected: our churches are equipped with Nativity scenes and Catholic schools go to great lengths to sustain the sense of occasion.
We may complain about the Christian message of Christmas being swamped by consumerism, but the fact remains that the emotional effect of Christmas on children in Catholic homes is likely to be the deepest and most lasting impression made on them by the Church. It survives in many a heart in which the faith has otherwise expired. We might say that, in terms of communicating a deep truth of the faith to the young, and engaging with the world, Christmas is our most successful evangelising moment of the year.
