Parish churches and cathedrals across the Church of England are preparing for their busiest week of the year with puppets, beach huts, wrapping paper and live animals all playing their part in telling the story of Christ’s birth.

“Church isn’t just for Christmas, but clearly the festival is one of our main opportunities to present a life changing message to a huge number of people,” explained the Rev Lynda Barley, Head of Research and Statistics for the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England.

Many Church of England churches are promoting their Christmas services on A Church Near You (www.acny.org.uk), a website which helps people find their nearest Anglican church alongside details of services and other activities.

Churches are using increasingly inventive ways of communicating the ‘world’s greatest ever story’ in fresh ways to their local communities.

All Saints Thorpe Acre, Loughborough are planning a family carol service on Christmas Eve dubbed ‘Bethlehem’s Got Talent’, where ‘contestants’ from the Christmas story will include singing angels, kings doing a magic act and the inn keepers performing stand-up comedy. The judges include King Herod, who takes on the ‘nasty judge’ mantle. The stories that the contestants tell will take the congregation through the Christmas story – and the real star of the show is of course the baby Jesus.

A ‘Carols and Nativity in the Barn’ service took place on 21 December at a farm in Preston Wynne, just north east of Hereford, where the congregation crammed into a Victorian stable complete with large manger. Local children read poems and Bible stories, and dressed up for the Nativity, while the farm’s animals proved unwitting extras – including horses putting their heads through the stable door.

Said parish priest, the Rev Heather Short, “This is the third year that we have held this service, which is growing in popularity each year. It is absolutely freezing in the barn, but everyone seems to like that - we have hot punch and mince pies after the singing!”

Cathedrals in particular are bracing themselves for a busy week of services, with many laying on extra carol services to cater for demand. In St Albans, the cathedral held a series of ‘drop in’ thirty-minute carol services every hour on the hour from on Saturday aimed at tourists and shoppers visiting the city. Around 2,500 people attended in total.

A city church in Nottingham offered shoppers laden with presents a free gift wrapping session on Saturday.

Priest-in-Charge at St Saviour’s in the Meadows, the Rev David Hammond explained, “It’s about offering something in the tradition of Christmas free gifts, just like Jesus was a gift to us. Personally I'm a terrible wrapper, I always forget to buy paper and ribbons and I’m often doing it late on Christmas Eve. So this is exactly what I’d appreciate for myself – as we try and do for others like we’d want them to do for us.”

Clergy led an evening carol service at a Manchester donkey sanctuary on 10 December, when children rode donkeys round candlelit paddocks and listened to a specially written Christmas story, accompanied by a brass band. The sanctuary, based in Debdale Park, Gorton, is run by The Elisabeth Svendsen Trust for Children and Donkeys.

St Saviour’s Brookwood, Surrey has been running two crib services to cater for demand on Christmas Eve for the last few years, featuring puppets operated by local teenagers. The special services broadly follow the format of a regular monthly service called 20:20 where young children and their parents can attend a brief service where they can see puppets, sing songs, do some craft and pray.

Every day during December on Brighton and Hove’s seafront, a beach hut opens its doors at 5.30pm for an hour to reveal a festive display highlighting one of the themes of the Christmas story. The lifesize variation on the traditional Advent calendar is believed to be the first event of this kind in the world and is organised by BEYOND, a new initiative funded by the Diocese of Chichester which uses creativity and the arts to stimulate people to think about spirituality.

“Churches have always looked for ways of bringing alive the Christmas story in ways that relate to modern life – that’s why we have had carol services in community centres and supermarkets for many years – and there’s no better time of the year for experimenting with ideas for reaching out to the local community," said Rev Barley.

It’s great to see so many fresh ways of celebrating the lasting good news and hope of Christmas, particularly in times of uncertainty.”