The Revd Kevin Watson, Moderator of the URC’s General Assembly, shares a story about the greatest Christmas gift of all time.

Imagine the scene one Christmas morning a few years ago in a materially rich house, but emotionally poor home. 

Down the stairs, a child runs excitedly and expectantly along the hallway passing room after room, and into a huge reception room. There in the corner stood a huge artificial tree resplendently adorned with every kind of ornament – except with anything Christian that could be deemed offensive – that was admired by all the business guests at the party the night before. 

What’s so special about a baby in a cattle shed? asks Susan Durber

There is something utterly extraordinary that we celebrate at Christmas. But it is not, I think, that a baby was once born in a stable. There was a moment in my life, a short while ago, when it suddenly dawned on me that that’s not so very odd at all.

I was on a Christian Aid visit to India and staying in an ordinary home in a village. I was trying to get to sleep after a long but exciting day. I could hear the man of the house snoring through the thin partition wall. But, much clearer than him, I could also hear the sounds of the cattle from the shed that was right up against the bedroom I was sharing with several other people.

Derek Estill, Moderator-elect of General Assembly, reflects on the importance of Jesus’ birth.

In amongst the excitement and final preparations for Christmas Day we often lose sight of what that first Christmas Eve would have been like. 

No tinsel or lights for Mary and Joseph, who were urgently and anxiously trying to find somewhere to stay. Mary was about to give birth and Joseph worried about her and how things were going to work out.

It could have been easy for a 31-year-old London-based survivor of the Rwandan genocide to act like the world owed her something after the atrocities she had experienced.

But Agnes Uwase – who has recently returned from spending seven months in four countries on the Council for World Mission’s (CWM) Training in Mission programme after being nominated to take part by the United Reformed Church – says it’s her duty to give back and calls herself a ‘Jesus warrior’.