For the rectors, vicars and parish priests who will finally slump, exhausted, over their Christmas lunch today after a round of Midnight Masses and morning services, it will be a moment of cheer. The pews will have been fuller than they are for an ordinary Sunday morning, although some congregants may have preferred a bit of live-streaming in the era of the omicron variant. 

But if a drop of post-prandial Port or Madeira leads to a more melancholy frame of mind, the thoughts of those very reverends might well turn to what is looming over the horizon: the results of the 2021 census, due to be published in the spring. They are likely to show the continuing downward drift of people defining themselves as Christian. 

The Office of National Statistics gave us a peek as to what is likely to be in store when they recently produced a compilation of figures from 2019. These revealed that just above half the population say their religion is Christian, but at 51 per cent, that’s a drop of 8.3 percentage points since the last Census in 2011. What is even more noticeable is that while there are still plenty of believers above the age of 60, the numbers are dropping most dramatically among the young. No religion was the second most common response to the question about religion in 2019, rising from 32.3 to 38.4 per cent between 2011 and 2019, while a whopping 53.4 per cent of those between 20-29 declared themselves in this way. 

And yet Christianity still remains the nation’s foundation. After all, our laws are based on Judaeo-Christian thinking about right and wrong, the Church of England is the established Church, and our history, heritage and the arts are all profoundly influenced by Christianity. 

But there is far more to this Christian nation than notions of right and wrong and the works of great writers such as Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton. Think for a moment if many more churches closed as congregation numbers fell — something that many fear their bishops might be contemplating. Not only would church-goers, both frequent and occasional, miss them, but so would countless others. The people who benefit from their meeting places, their foodbanks, beauty and music. Those who know they can turn to the church at a moment of happiness, of loneliness, or grief. 

Last year the National Churches Trust published The House of Good, a report that quantified, for the first time ever, the social value of church buildings through the welfare and wellbeing created in their neighbourhoods, valued at £12.4 billion a year. In this way, the faith that is these buildings’ bedrock seeps into society through all the effort that the church members make. 

Some people enjoy a church for the collective experience it brings, whether at a church service or events held within its walls. Others seek the opposite. I recall Sir Michael Palin telling me once that although he wasn’t an ardent believer, the silence of a church on a weekday afternoon offered him a peace he could not find anywhere else. It was, in other words, a spiritual experience. 

Others found that too when the Bible Society came up with the ingenious idea of creating a garden based on Psalm 23, also known as The Lord Is My Shepherd, at the Chelsea Flower Show. Many of the visitors, who were not active believers, commented how the garden with its references to the green pastures and quiet waters of the psalm offered them a sense of peace, especially during the pandemic when they had thought more deeply than ever before about life and its meaning. 

At such times of crisis, even people whose connection with Christianity is tenuous still turn to it. Imagine Remembrance Sunday without the shape and structure that a liturgy gives to the ceremony at the Cenotaph or a village memorial. 

They turn to it too, in celebration. Next year, Britain will celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. There will be parties and parades, and beacons lit, but the big event will be the service of thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral. The rest of the Jubilee would seem all too flimsy, without that moment to take stock. But the church service will give it a gravitas and a meaning, just as for many, the Queen’s broadcast message is the key point of Christmas Day. Amid all the jollity and the overeating, the presents and the guests, her words, steeped in her own Christian beliefs, are a reminder of what the feast is really about.

So whatever the Census figures might say, this country does remain a Christian one. And yet the tidings are not entirely glad. Plenty of people have given up on the churches; many have taken their weddings elsewhere for years, and more recently their family funerals too. Christianity is still at the heart of the nation’s life, but it could be at the heart of many more individuals’ lives too. And if it isn’t, those of us who do still believe must ask ourselves why.