with the Rev Kevin Logan, Vicar of Christ Church, Accrington.

"WHY has nobody told me this Christmas story before?" asked the 13-year-old, "and why did they give that baby a swear word for his name?"

Amazingly, whenever Sir Cliff sings 'Saviour's Day', today's young ones haven't a clue. Mistletoe and wine they know, but they haven't a millennium prayer's chance of understanding Mary's boy child.

Brian Todd's pithy Wednesday Telegraph letter was brilliant. "Christmas is about Christ", he wrote, hinting that if only religious folk like me did our job better "it might be better for the world". Top marks!

So, taking his advice, how many 13-year-olds know that:

They need a saviour to leave this world successfully?

There are only two destinations on leaving life's departure lounge?

One is heaven (and would they know the other?)

Do today's teenagers (or any-agers, for that matter) know that:

They're sinners who need saving?

Sin's a three letter word with 'I' in the middle?

We're naturally centred on self instead of God, and this is the reason we regularly tear our lives, and those of others, apart?

Would they guess that we need saving from this state because heaven can't accommodate more than one God?

The first Christmas was when the one, true loving God came down to be one of us and save us from hell in this life and the next.

Salvation comes gift-wrapped and free and God wants to put it into the stocking of every one of us today.

Do you know the Saviour Child? Do you know it's Christmas?