"What do you want for Christmas, Isaac."

"Don't know Uncle Johnny."

"Don't know! What do you mean - you don't know!" Silence. "Get Beccy."

Beccy wasn't any more helpful. "Surprises, Uncle Johnny," she said. Well I had a half a mind to surprise her. "Get Joe," I said.

Joe was more forthcoming. In reply to my question he said, "Sweets, stickers and stamps."

Finally I requested their father and got from him the information I needed. I bought Beccy a camera and Isaac a video game.

I wonder if my nephews and niece would have been pleased to get the presents they needed rather than the presents they wanted. A lady at my chapel bought me nostril hair clippers for Christmas - not the most welcome of gifts. A newly married couple lived in a caravan in our village whilst their new council house was being built. They were surrounded by a sea of mud. So Cecil, a man of little imagination, bought his wife, Marlene, a pair of Wellingtons for Christmas. She threw them at him!

The Christmas story is popular because it gives people what they want - a festival of light, peace on earth and goodwill towards men and a baby lying in a manger. The words of the angels are forgotten: "Today in the town of David a saviour has been born to you." That is the gift we need.

My pupils used to ask me regularly as clockwork as the festive season approached: "Mr Reed what do you really want for Chrismas?"

Well what do I really want? Last Christmas eve there was a knock on my door. It was Dean Sykes, the Brockley Cricket Captain. He had bought a card and he came in for a few minutes. He couldn't stop long because he had some presents to buy for his sister's toddlers. He was going to ruin his sister's Christmas and buy them drums! He came in. Several people come to my door with cards. I haven't seen them for twelve months. They shove their cards through my door and rush off as if all the fiends of hell were after them.

What I would really like for Christmas is that old friends from school and college, former colleagues and favourite pupils down the years would come to me - would drop in for a chat - but they'll never come. The only alternative would be to go to them. That is not quite so appealing. It requires an effort and it is humbling. When you make an effort to go and see some one you make a statement: "I am sufficiently fond of you, I care enough about you, to come..."

God concluded as he looked down on the world of men, "They'll never come." So he came to us.

Mild he lays his glory by
Born that man no more may die.

This was more than a gesture. It was God's rescue mission. Jesus had a job to do.

I did pay several visits last Christmas. There was one I left till last. Gerald was in the psychiatric wing of the West Suffolk hospital suffering from acute depression. I didn't want to go and see him but I made myself do so. There he was - looking grey. He had been depressed for three years. In the end he got suicidal. Gerald told me that the only high he got was from thinking about suicide.

I asked him, "Has it helped being in here with other depressed people?" His companions did not look very scintillating company to me.

"Yes," he said, "nobody can understand what it's like unless they're depressed too."

Well I was jolly glad that I wasn't depressed. There was no way that I would have become depressed to help him. I was hardly able to visit him because I thought it might make me miserable.

What a contrast to God's reaction to our plight. He understands what it is like to be human. He shared our predicament. He became one of us to bear our sin and pay the price for our redemption.

Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.