Have you ever noticed that the one thing missing from nativity plays is the actual nativity, or birth? We have Mary, Joseph, angels, shepherds, innkeepers, sheep and donkeys: then, often, the baby Jesus appears from nowhere like a rabbit from a magician's hat!

I've not had babies myself, but I'm led to believe that it's a bit more involved than that. Where are the birth-pangs, the agonies of labour?!

Similarly, our Christmas cards tend to portray the nativity as the most peaceful scene on earth, but the story is anything but peaceful — a town so busy that the only space is in a cow-shed round the back, a filthy horse-trough the only place to put the baby, and a bunch of wittering yokel shepherds coming in like a load of tourists gawping round a maternity unit.

But precisely therein lies the wonder of the Christmas message: God is embodied in human form not in the cosy, comfortable parts of life, but in the unpleasant and messy. God doesn't avoid the difficult bits of life, but is to be found in their very midst.

Whether you're having an easy time of it or not, the prayer and hope of Christians in Tavistock is that you'll feel beside you this Christmas the God who in Jesus is embodied in the hard parts of life as well as the nice bits.

With that sort of God beside us, I can wish you, on behalf of the ministers and churches in the town, a deeply happy Christmas, and a deeply peaceful new year.