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The other afternoon, around 4.30, I was sitting in my friends' kitchen when first one snow-plough and then another appeared. Before long they both turned into ice cream vans whose owners made me huge cones and then shoved them in my face. I discovered I could hardly breathe and then suddenly someone started pounding on my heart which made me sneeze the ice cream all over my assailants.

...and it wasn't a dream. It really happened when my friends' two children, aged four and six decided it was time to involve the visiting adult in their game of make-believe.

These kids had previously been playing with each other for at least two hours. They had helped to make Christmas decorations, they had drawn in their colouring books, but what they clearly enjoyed was their innate ability to transform upturned chairs into snow plows and inflict an ice-cream storm on their unsuspecting house guest.

….all this made me rethink the meaning of Jesus' words 'Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.' When I ask people – as I frequently do – what he was getting at, what in children we should emulate, the common reply is 'innocence.'

Well, I don't think so. Having recently heard the same four-year old claim that she had 'opened a Christmas present accidently’, I doubt that we should automatically assume children are innocent. I'd rather suggest that among others things Jesus might have seen in children was their love of using their imagination, their ability to think outside the box, their pleasure in finding delight in transforming the dull things around them into magnificent artefacts, whether that be chairs into snow-ploughs or thin air into ice-cream.

This suggests to me that Christmas can be a dangerous time for children... especially when their relatives believe that the most sophisticated new toy advertised as a 'must-have' is what they must buy. The adeptness of even toddlers to press the right buttons on an electronic game or computer is undoubted and may be a delight to their parents. The toddlers are exhibiting human skill.

But to make something out of nothing – that is divine. That power of imagination which is behind every symphony, every art work, every invention is to be cherished... and it all starts or re-starts when we enjoy engaging with our children at play.

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