Like many of you, my husband and I attended a nativity featuring a loved child.

Of course, the child we went to see – to be forever known as the Waving Angel – was the best, cutest, the every-other superlative you can think of.

Anyway, I am sure most have come away from nativities that have included the central story, Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus with the odd Santa, alien and other strange beings thrown in for good, modern measure.

These nativities, like our Christmas cards, are fun, innocent and sanitised. This year, though, I started to wonder about what it must really have been like on that first Christmas day.

I have to confess, this contemplation did not come from an inspiring Bible passage but from YouTube!

My favourite carol is O Holy Night and for me the best singer of this is Josh Groban. The video that goes with his YouTube version is simply wonderful – the most moving depiction of the nativity I have ever seen.

It shows a young woman giving birth with only her husband to help.

It shows the joy of welcoming a new baby into the world and then the wonder and fear of knowing they have been entrusted to raise the Son of God.

Not only that, but they must have been exhausted by having to travel so far from their home in Nazareth to Bethlehem for a census imposed upon them by the Romans who have invaded their country.

Only weeks into the future, they are going to have to flee into Egypt to save the baby from King Herod. They are going to be refugees.

We don’t know much about their time in Egypt, but I can guess they weren’t welcomed with open arms.

I bet they couldn’t just walk up to Egyptian immigration, explain they were the parents of the Son of God and be given a room at the Cairo Ritz!

I wonder if there are any modern-day parallels?

Oh, that’s right! There are hundreds of thousands of parallels both close to us and far away.

Believing Christians have been told when Christ comes again, he will come, not as a baby, but in glory so the world will have no doubt about who he is.

We can, therefore, rule out the possibility that the refugees scattered around the world today are the Sons of God. And yet, each one is a child of God, whether we acknowledge it or they do.

I have two children. I gave birth to both in sterile hospitals with painkillers and medical assistance on hand when I needed it.

When I left hospital I went to a house that was ours. I went home to a husband who had a job and as secure a future as anyone has.

We brought our children up in a democratic country where they had the right to education, to health and to wellbeing.

I don’t want to turn this column into a political diatribe, but watching Josh’s video dragged me out of the cosy world of our little angel who never stopped waving at us throughout her nativity.

It took me, instead, into a world where toddlers are drowned, where families are trapped in war-torn cities where it is no longer possible to tell who is friend and who is enemy.

The Roman empire is gone, but this world is still scarred by dictators and by evil people who don’t differentiate or even care if the ones they kill are men, women or babies.

Two thousand years after the birth in a stable, the world still celebrates the arrival of Christ. But it is a world that has not changed.

Certainly, I couldn’t have watched YouTube 2,000 years ago. But there is still fear, anger and war. And there are still refugees.

Thankfully, there are also people like Mary and Joseph, prepared to take on responsibility to make the world a better place.

In this season of peace and goodwill, it is time to say thank you to those doctors, nurses, aid workers, religious leaders and humanitarians who try, despite all the odds, to look into the face of every refugee as though they are looking into the face of God.

To them, and to you, Merry Christmas.