JUST before Christmas, three years ago, I wrote in this column about Las Posadas – the Mexican tradition of children dressed as Mary and Joseph, going from house to house over the nine days to Christmas Eve asking for shelter.

In the UK this idea more often takes the form of carved or created figures being taken to schools, shops and community centres, as well as people’s homes, begging that the figures may have lodging for a night on their journey through Advent to Christmas Day.

Since I wrote about the origins of the tradition and how British churches here have adopted the practice, things have gone to a whole new level. This year Wyke Methodist Church in Bradford, having started a knitted Mary and Joseph on their way to various places, uploaded a photo of them to Facebook and invited people to welcome Mary and Joseph into their place, by clicking on the picture and leaving a comment indicating the town, city or village where they had been welcomed. At the time of writing almost 29,000 people have written comments and welcomed Mary and Joseph to their homes. The list includes such places as Gretna Scotland; Hillsborough, Northern Ireland; Bendigo, Australia; Palmer, Alaska; Vancouver; Portugal; Zimbabwe; the Bahamas; and Haifa, Israel. It seems Mary and Joseph are welcome everywhere.

Of course, it may be a lot easier to welcome virtual figures into your home or community than real strangers or to be hospitable to celebrity figures from 2,000 years ago than to migrants and refugees whose language you do not speak and whose customs you do not know. And in today’s cultural climate we are suspicious of ‘outsiders’, fearing that jobs may be stolen, resources stretched too far, identity lost or something worse. All the same, there is something extraordinary tantalising that God may come to us in the stranger; that we may, as the Bible puts it, ‘entertain angels unaware’.

One Christmas we invited two Chinese students into our home to share the festivities. They were unable to return to China and would have spent the time alone on a deserted campus. Their enthusiastic excitement at everything done – it was all new - was infectious and we got so much more from the celebrations because they were with us, than we would have done without them.

Almost all religious traditions have a large place for hospitality, especially at the big festival occasions, so that God’s blessing on us is shared and extended to all, especially the needy and the stranger. The real challenge is to continue with open hearts and homes and communities when the celebration is over.

The Reverend Roger Walton, chairman of the West Yorkshire Methodist District