This bit from the Children of Green Knowe sums up the mystical and magical element of Christmas for me - it's about time, and love, and our humanity and our distant history and stories and sadness and joy and children, and I don't think you have to be Christian to access it even though the Nativity is a strong thread within it.
“As they rested there, tired and dreamy and content, he thought he heard the rocking-horse gently moving, but the sound came from Mrs. Oldknow’s room, which opened out of the music room. A woman’s voice began to sing very softly a cradle song that Tolly had learnt and dearly loved:
Lully Lullay, Thou little tiny child
By by, Lully, Lullay.
O sisters, too, how may we do,
For to preserve this day
This poor youngling
For whom we sing
By by, Lully, Lullay.
‘Who is it?’ he whispered.
‘It’s the grandmother rocking the cradle,’ said Mrs. Oldknow, and her eyes were full of tears.
‘Why are you crying, Granny? It’s lovely.’
‘It is lovely, only it is such a long time ago. I don’t know why that should be sad, but it sometimes seems so.’
The singing began again.
‘Granny,’ whispered Tolly again with his arm through hers, ‘whose cradle is it? Linnet is as big as I am.’
‘My darling, this voice is much older than that. I hardly know whose it is. I heard it once before at Christmas.’
It was queer to hear the baby’s sleepy whimper only in the next room, now, and so long ago.