BENEATH the rather neat headline "O little towel of Bethlehem", last week's Church Times carried a timely story about the surge every Christmas in Sainsbury's tea towel sales.

They call it the Bethlehem boost, sparked by the nativity play need for authentic looking shepherds and similar bods and necessary because the advance of the dish washer has made a big hole in the tea towel market.

"Nativity plays attract an amount of competition and are video taped, so parents buy new towels to make sure the kids look their best on stage," said a Sainsbury's spokeswoman, though a careful scrutiny of the second chapter of St Luke fails to suggest the precise role which tea towels played on that glad occasion.

The multi-striped herringbone version is outselling the traditional green and white stripes by two to one, say Sainsbury's. The lady of this house recalls being given, when we lived in Croft, a great pile of tea towels from an instant mash company, so that - prudently or otherwise - the wise men seemed sponsored by Yeoman.

Last Sunday at St Cuthbert's church in Barton, however, the tea towel supply seemed to have dried up altogether.

The Magi, purple panoplied, were not so much wise as manifestly omniscient; the shepherds not just good but utterly wonderful, the angels veritably from the realms of glory.

Unlike some Good Friday services elsewhere, the staff of Barton primary school had decided against enlisting the services of a donkey, preferring instead the sort of horses' hoof effect perfected by Jennings and Darbishire. That seemed wise, an' all.

Barton's on the old A1 between Darlington and Scotch Corner, the children in church for the nativity play and for the Christingle service, the now hugely popular festive fund raiser involving an orange, a candle, four cocktail sticks and some sweeties.

Perhaps because there wasn't much call for tea towels, Sainsbury's in Darlington provided the oranges, instead.

The service was led by the Rev Alan Glasby, who lives in Barton but is responsible as team rector for 14 churches in ten parishes and may occasionally feel like an ecclesiastical old woman who lived in a shoe, yet gave every impression of being in control.

"If anything goes wrong it just adds to the fun," said Mr Glasby beforehand, though everyone knew it'd be all right on the night.

Two days earlier William Banks, one of the Barton pupils, had been presented with a baby brother called Henry. "If they'd given us a bit more warning," said Lynn Trewhitt, the head, "we'd have written him into the script."

Mrs Trewhitt was accompanied by her teaching colleague Mrs Shepherd, watching over her flock by night.

It began at 4pm, same time as Arsenal v Chelsea on television, the church every bit as thronged as Highbury stadium and with almost as many cameras - this being Christmas 2004, parental permission properly sought before The Northern Echo's photographer might attend.

Some of us, it should be admitted, were rather hoping that the Arsenal might find it child's play, as well.

Mums had hearts in mouths, dads video cameras or top notch mobile phones in hand. Were the babe to have been born today, the good news would be proclaimed by a chorus of ring tones, the picture e-mailed within minutes to the Jewish Chronicle.

The bairns were brilliant, twinkle twinkling little stars. Though parts of the script were inaudible at the back of the church, slightly older babies anxious to get in on the act, the effect was no less timelessly enchanting, no less indelibly imprinted in the family album.

Since the candles are lit and the church darkened, the Christingle had more calamitous potential, too. Christingle services have hugely benefited the Children's Society, as this one did, and so far seem not greatly to have troubled the Ecclesiastical Insurance Society.

At Barton they'd decided they couldn't be too careful, the nativity players asked to change out of anything inflammable before the service proceeded. Thus was raised that other great mystery of the ages, why flammable and inflammable mean exactly the same thing.

The other big challenge, said Mr Glasby, was to get out of church before eating the sweets. "If you eat the orange," he added cheerfully, "you have to eat the candle as well."

It was the serious bit, for all that. Seventy children aged under 11 run away from home or from care every day, said Mr Glasby; 100,000 under 16s go missing every year.

"It might not happen in Barton, but it happens in Darlington and in Leeds and Bradford, it's part of every day reality," he said and told the story of Jane, abused and on the streets for Christmas.

"Keep Jane somewhere at the back of your minds," the team rector added. "That's the reality we're trying to respond to; that's what we're about today."

The annual fire prevention exercise passed otherwise without incident, the oranges representing the world, the candles - the light of the world - perpetually piercing the darkness.

The carols and songs were appropriate - even Shine Jesus Shine - the occasion delightful, the second half still to be played for at Highbury.

Those who'd seen off the dolly mixtures left the church playing Three Musketeers with the cocktail sticks on their way to a coruscating and a carefree Christmas. May it be the same for At Your Service readers everywhere.

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