“EVENTS, dear boy, events,” replied Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to a journalist who asked him what was most likely to blow his government off course. And there you have it: there is never any shortage of events and so never any need to spend very long in head-scratching for a columnist to decide what to write about.

Perhaps the most telling recent event was the publication last week of the 2011 census figures which is a once in ten years story, an investigation of the national constitution as revealing as a full body scan.

The most dramatic finding is that the population has increased by the greatest number, and at the fastest rate, in living memory and, perhaps, ever – more even than in the baby-boom years just after the Second World War. This increase has been provided chiefly by the addition of 200,000 immigrants every year since 2001. And there are now four million fewer Christians and one million more Muslims.

Let me leave out of this all political comment and just state the blindingly obvious truth: that such a great change ought to provoke us to some analysis of how this has come to happen and to try to understand what the likely consequences might be for the country.

There have been more words written about this in the past week – more even than the increased number of immigrants and the diminished total of Christians put together.

So I thought, why don’t I write about Christmas instead, especially since I can’t write about it next Tuesday when it will be Christmas Day and there’s no morning paper?

Then events, “dear boy,” combined to allow me to talk about the census and immigration all in one breath, as it were.

The other evening I walked through streets glistening with early frost the short distance from my house to church to conduct a carol service for one of the local schools. And there they all were, excited youngsters and their overcoated parents. The church full. The juniors in their cheerful blazers, the colour of Santa Claus’ cloak. The school choir in the chancel. The small orchestra at the front of the nave and the half-size instruments of the littlest children looking cuter than you could imagine and full of promise for burgeoning musical careers.

What has this delightful scene got to do with the census? Well, perhaps nothing. But I should say that out of about 150 pupils I counted only two white faces whereas all the teaching staff were white.

I repeat, I offer no political interpretation of this except to say it should surely provoke us to thought.

We sang the carols, and the orchestra set out to boldly go to regions of sound that Mozart never visited. The kings and shepherds took their places in the well-loved carols.

And so I, too, could resemble Santa, I climbed into my red robe and ascended the pulpit to give a Christmas message.

The festive atmosphere was as thrilling as the fiery frost which made the churchyard dazzle under the winter sky.

So I talked about the stars. And one little chap in a red blazer told me he had a telescope through which he would peer at them every clear night.

I said: “The stars you see tonight through your telescope are the same as the ones that shone over the stable and the Christ child.”

They went a bit quiet after that.