No donkeys, no angels singing

It may all sound like a papal bull but, with just over a month to go before Christmas, the Pope has declared the presence of animals in Nativity scenes is based on little more than myth.

In other words, as Ebenezer Scrooge, a character in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol put it: “bah... humbug.”

So, if you are about to dust down the crib, you may want to consider that the animals you thought were meant to keep baby Jesus warm might be a sixth century PR invention and have nothing to do with the birth of the Christ child.