Stephen Tyndale-Biscoe: Nativity story is a cornerstone of our culture

The children take it in turns to shout out a line.

"An angel appeared!"

"Mary, you will have a baby and his name will be Jesus!" That's Gabriel, with wings and a rather precarious-looking halo wobbling on a wire above his head.

Mary and Joseph make their journey to Bethlehem holding hands.

The youngest children who have assorted, nondescript roles (there are a lot be got into the cast, one way or another – and all of them in costumes) are mystified by the proceedings.

They may have seen their mum or dad, or grandma or grandpa waving madly at them from among the faces staring at them, but why they have been dressed up and herded into this hall is only vaguely understood.

"Jesus," "Mary" and the "Nativity" are words they will have heard, and they have been taught some songs which one or two of the bolder ones may sing, the others staring about them at these unfamiliar proceedings.

The one thing they may know is that it has something to do with Christmas, which means Father Christmas and presents. The connection, however, is baffling.

The teachers have put a great deal of work into this performance, coaching the children – some of them very little – so they know the words of the songs and the actions to go with them, and the lines to be said.

Then there are the costumes to organise and, at last, on the day when all these labours come to fruition, getting the children into them and herded in the right direction.

There are parents and grandparents in the audience with lumps in their throats, and perhaps the hint of a tear as they watch their brave little darlings grapple so gravely with the expectations they've suddenly been landed with.

It's a mixed-race cast, with Sikhs and Muslims and nominal Christians from age two-and-a-half to six, acting out a story that is foundational to a culture that was once so self-assured, so confident in its strength and worth that its envoys took it to every part of the globe, where bits of it stick, even today.

Perhaps rather few people, watching this Nativity Play in this school gym with its high blank walls and slightly-leaking roof, sense the tradition of which they are a part. A tradition, it has to be said, which is becoming decidedly fragile, and for the reason that the very culture of which it is at the heart is fragile too.

It is, in fact, something of a wonder that secular-run schools should still do the "Nativity" thing at all, although many in the State system have long since retreated from this overt display of the nation's religious heritage.

Sensitive souls, of which parts of the school system have an abundance, look askance at anything that smacks of a culture that is embedded in our shameful Imperial past. Their urge is to purge every trace of it from our modern, multi-cultural society.

To borrow an old adage, they have been intent on cutting off the nose to spite the face.

The course they have been assiduously following may not, however, lead to the destination they had in mind. We saw that in the July 7, 2005 London bombings; we saw it in the hoped-for carnage perpetrated in Stockholm by suicide bomber Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly.

For children brought up in Britain, as British citizens – no matter what their parents' background – the Christmas story is as much a part of the culture they are now a part of as is the history of our Parliamentary democracy – and, indeed, the history of the British people.

The angels, the shepherds, the Three Kings, the inn keeper and Mary and Joseph – and assorted snow flakes and animals – may not grasp the significance of what they are involved in, but a reference point is being established for the rest of their lives.

Stephen Tyndale-Biscoe is a former Yorkshire Post writer