ON THE sort of Joy to the World winter morning when it was possible to suppose that if God wasn't in his heaven then He'd just popped down to the paper shop, Christmas came early to Newbiggin.

The corollary, that all's right with the world, is manifestly inapplicable, of course. The year 2001 has been what gentle folk might call a stumer, and not least in the North-East countryside.

The region has several Newbiggins, including one between West Auckland and Darlington that was so small it may have become permanently misplaced. None is as remote, or as remotely glorious, as Teesdale's.

There are approximately 30 once-whitewashed houses, a village hall, a babbling beck and, built by the area's lead miners in 1760, a Methodist chapel that is the oldest in the world in continuous use.

(Grammarians, and those who stumbled through O-level English in the 1960s, will have noted the careful use of the word "continuous", which means without a break. Continual has an interval, we were taught, and with all the pressure upon the poor final syllables.)

A board outside the chapel proclaims that the land cost £5 and the building £60 15s 3d; another notice advises that the foot-and-mouth outbreak has "caused some changes in the programme of events at this chapel".

It didn't cause changes, it compelled wholesale cancellation. Though the claim holds good, Tuesday morning's "Coffee and Carols" service was the first of any sort since February. The clock said 10.30am, but in every other respect it was timeless.

John Wesley preached there several times, travelling the high road from Newbiggin to High House chapel in Weardale, but decided against an open air meeting - it was June 1772 - because it was so cold.

Twelve years later he rode from Cotherstone to Newbiggin, observing in his Journal that since he was a poor horseman, and had a rough horse, he had just the strength for the journey and none to spare.

He may have had a point about his horsemanship. Though Wesley himself was doubtless filled with joy, his horses always looked as if they'd rather be somewhere else entirely.

Restored in 1987 "to serve the modern age", the wood-lined chapel still has tiered seating, snapshots of Methodist history and, though now redundant, a Bible-black stove which bears a passing resemblance to one of Mr Richard Trevithick's early steam engines.

The congregation comfortably exceeded that of Newbiggin itself and had come from as far as Knaresborough, the service principally comprised requests from throughout the dale - a sort of Festive Family Favourites - the feast would have fed the five thousand.

Only the familiar church cat failed to put in an appearance, perhaps because there was no room to swing it.

There were scones and shortbread, mince pies more frosted than the December fields, ginger biscuits, rock cakes and those sea shell-shaped things which doubtless have a name in the Be-Ro Cook Book but must perforce remain anonymous here.

The kitchen door, as luck would have it, also offered the best vantage point for photography. If the question is who ate all the mince pies, the answer is probably Mr Chris Tinsley.

Carols were sung and cookies crumbled almost simultaneously, or as simultaneously as dignity and decorum might allow. For safety reasons said Richard Hunter, Teesdale's Methodist minister, it would be better for most of the service to remain seated.

We sang them all, or almost all - for friends in Forest, for the Middleton coffee morning group, for Pauline and friends in Barnard Castle - heard the minister read the familiar passage from Isaiah about the people who walked in darkness having seen a great light and trusted that it was so.

Eddie and Mary Bell sang duets, June Luckhurst - who so devotedly cares for the chapel - essayed several readings but declined to go into the pulpit which Wesley used.

"There's all sorts in there already," she said and so there was, whilst in the other pulpit was a box offering broccoli in three languages. Still the ministering angels, if not the photographer, kept emerging heavy laden from the kitchen.

None hurried homewards. It's something of a Methodist museum as well, much to see and to read, and today Mary Lowes - chapel stalwart and former head of Forest-in-Teesdale primary school - meets the tourist authority in the hope of further promoting it.

Though foot-and-mouth has left a lugubrious legacy, she believes that good can come from it all. "People are starting to look at initiatives for the countryside which they never did before. I believe in trying to be positive, especially at Christmas. It's the time of hope, isn't it."

THE Christmas cards cascade, too, including one from the Rev John Stephenson in East Herrington, Sunderland, and another from the Rev Jonathan Jennings in Surrey.

John Stephenson, it may be recalled, is the outspoken former Vicar of Eppleton - Hetton-le-Hole, in other words - who only two months ago told the column that he was long through with The Northern Echo but appears to have returned to the fold.

He enjoyed the At Your Service column about Alan Smithson, the retiring Bishop of Jarrow, but wishes we'd mentioned his support for ex-CND general secretary and peace campaigner Bruce Kent. "We don't get many bishops like him sticking their necks out against the military establishment, least of all the present Archbishop of Canterbury who appears to think that God is always on our side."

Jonathan Jennings is the former curate of Peterlee and of St Cuthbert's, Darlington, who - his seasonal round robin reveals - took up a new appointment in the summer. He is press officer to the poor, put upon Archbishop of Canterbury.

ANOTHER card's from Hollywood, where John Alderson - the Horden miner's son who became one of the silver screen's most enduring names - now lives in a rest home for film folk and gets hugs from the likes of Angie Dickenson and Catherine Zeta Jones.

He's also just spent a week in Charleston, North Carolina - "where I fooled them into thinking I was worth a place in their festival of Western stars."

We'd told the amazing 85-year-old's story earlier this year. "Entirely due to the noted columnist of The Northern Echo I have at last become a star in my own bailiwick," he says in his Christmas circular and calls me, as always he has, Mike Apted.

For some of us, recognition takes a little longer.

STILL more belated fame for Pat Constantine, the belle of Bishop Auckland Grammar School, circa 1950.

There have been more letters and more e-mails. At church on Sunday people brought photographs of her and of her dad - died in cricket action whilst playing for the Nomads - and in the pub on Monday a long-lost swain turned up seeking (in vain) the lady's present whereabouts.

Pat is now spending a Christmas holiday abroad. By the time she returns, the fuss may have died down. Somehow, however, it all seems rather unlikely.