Of all the Christmas TV specials on repeat or catchup, the one I find most poignant, and funniest, is that episode of Rev in which Tom Hollander spectacularly fails to conjure some authentic spiritual feeling in his drunken congregation at midnight mass. The beauty of that series was that even in comically eviscerating the pieties and hypocrisies of the Church of England, Hollander never gave up on its potential for delivering simple human kindness. When that episode came out, a decade ago, the census figures showed that 59.3% of the UK population still thought of itself as Christian. The latest census figures, released last week, have seen that number dwindle to marginally over half of the country – 51%. Meanwhile, the proportion of those who profess “no religion” has risen six percentage points to 38.4%. As someone who ticks that latter box, the only time I’m ever at a church service these days, beyond weddings and funerals, is for an annual nine lessons and carols. This year, as always, I was fascinated by how readily my memory inhabited even the more obscure of those sung verses. “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see/Hail the incarnate deity,” I sang, with all the other once-a-year attenders. And as ever, I sensed a flash of nostalgia for those childhood certainties – attributable, no doubt, to Charles Wesley and his peerless gift for rhyming propaganda. Those in peril A couple of weeks ago, I was in Dunkirk, talking to some of those desperate people, young men and families, who were determined to head to the beaches in the dark and try their luck in navigating the 21 or more miles of the Channel crossing. Afterwards, I walked along those beaches in the sleet and bone-chilling wind. Standing looking out at the grey ocean, it seemed barely comprehensible that anyone’s life – not least those of the people with whom I had just been chatting – could be so bleak that climbing into an overloaded rubber dinghy offered the best hope for the future. In recent days, in response to the drowning of 27 people at the beginning of the month, the EU border force has stepped up its efforts to prevent the crossings, employing a “hi-tech spotter plane” belonging to the Danish air force. Though the plane prevented a couple of launches, some dinghies still got across the Channel to the UK, while other groups, including young children, were rescued by the RNLI. The planes further militarise what is a humanitarian crisis – safe routes for asylum seekers are the best (and cheapest) way to disrupt the traffickers and prevent more deaths this winter. Let it snow Snowflakes have, in some political circles, acquired a bad name in recent years. One man who is at pains to restore to them their former magic is Kenneth Libbrecht, professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology. In the course of 20 years’ research, Libbrecht has rewritten the science of ice crystals. This week, in time for Christmas, he will publish what is billed as the grand unified theory of snowflakes (a £98 stocking filler). Libbrecht’s principle discovery is that there are two very distinct ways in which ice crystals are generated, which has to do with the complex structure of their surfaces and how they change with temperature. He also, Grinch-like, disproves the single “fact” that every child knows: in producing “designer” snow crystals, he has shown that, under lab conditions at least, two snowflakes can be exactly alike.