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From Canon Ann Easter, Chief Executive of a Charity and Chaplain to the Queen:

I had a lovely day last Wednesday when I was invited to lunch in the House of Commons and given an award to mark my contribution to family life and values in British society! It was mainly about my work with the charity – but the fact that I often talk to you about my family, here on Radio 2, got a special mention.

It made me think of what we mean by family. I was born in my Nan’s house where my parents lived while they saved up for a home of their own; we were there til I was seven, by which time we had my sister too – but we also had my aunt’s mother in law, Aunt Kate, and for a while I remember Uncle Ted living with us – I’m not sure just how we were related, and maybe we weren’t but we made a family nevertheless. Lots of adults were ‘Uncles’ and ‘Aunties’ in those days – and now I’m Auntie to the Asian children next door.

Christmas is a very family sort of time – it seems that everywhere we look, there are adverts with beautiful, lively people laughing as they consume enormous amounts of glossy food – it must be hard for those people who are a long way away, literally or emotionally, from their family, or indeed, for those for whom the word ‘family’ means only pain and disappointment.

And yesterday, I was at our local Cemetery for a bitter sweet carol service with people whose families have been radically and sometimes tragically changed this past year by the death of a loved one – and we remembered that family in heaven is still family.

That other family we see all over the place just now, the ones in the stable, were pretty mixed too; Mary and Joseph were a pair of unmarried refugees who had to camp out with the animals in someone’s stable to have their first baby - with Joseph still wondering who was the father.

Christmas isn’t about the perfect family; it’s about the imperfect, real life, ordinary families just like yours and mine; and for those of us who don’t have a family, there’s a welcome into the Holy Family along with the shepherds, the kings and the angels. We’re all part of that picture.