Not exactly what you would expect from a religion based on love and trust, but it is true.

Many Christmases ago, when I was small and I used to go to Sunday school at the local Methodist Church where my mother was the organist, one Christmas Day I was asked to choose my favourite toy to take to church.

A little suspicious, I asked Why? Toys were not encouraged in church, and I remember my mum telling me that she would never tie a bow in my hair again, as all she could see was it whizzing back and forward as I chatted constantly to my fellow Sunday School friends before we left the main service!

Apparently that Christmas Day we were going to learn a lesson in charity, and were going to give our best things to “poor children” (presumably as God gave his precious son to Us, but sadly I never made the link back then) Hmmm, maybe my honest reply would mean a loss of my favourite toy…….. so with an innocent and charming smile, I took another one to church.

Years of Sunday School Sundays went by - for which I still have the books which were given as attendance prizes.

Sadly a prize was also the reason that I remember not being believed by adults. I’m not sure if this was before or after Christmas taught me to lie, but we had just come home from the prize giving and I told my parents what a good book it was. “You couldn’t have read it already.” And they tested me to see if I was telling the truth. I was, of course, but they didn’t comprehend the speed at which I could read while also walking along the pavement beside them!

Anyway, Sundays went by and years later I stopped going, because no-one could explain the Trinity adequately for my enquiring mind.

But I can still sing all verses of the most popular carols without a hymn book, which is handy in cold village churches where the heating verges on the side of energy conservation and this means you can keep both hands in your pockets.

Ive been to an Alpha course, love the Gnostic gospels (why did my spell check insist on a capital G there?) and can use all the right terminology, and think “What a good guy Jesus was” but I cant fit in the box marked Conventional Christian. The village vicar says that some of my ideas are “whacky”. So I just help out with the Taize service, I’m on the brass cleaning rota, and go to the candlelit Carol Service - and we all go to the Family Service on Christmas Day, the one where the vicar throws boxes of Smarties across the pews and admires the presents the children bring to show him – and doesn’t take them away to give to “poor children”.