FOR as long as anyone can remember, Christmas has had something of a dual personality. On the one hand, there is the religious celebration, on the other, there is the secularist flight of fancy into a magical realm of reindeer, sleigh bells and Santa Claus. The commercial eruption of the other personality of Christmas seems to know no bounds, considing the amount spent at Christmas, it's obvious that Santa Claus is where the real action is now centred. How can the simple story of a child born in a stable so long ago hope to compete with the sheer wonder that the commercial version of Christmas has created?

Perhaps we should think about throwing Christmas entirely over to its secular manifestation. Messages of promise and hope are hardly necessary in an era of credit on demand; and tidings of comfort and joy have little place among the cultural biases of our age - those of self-centred individualism where excessive corporate wealth has taken over from the common good, helping to fuel the US national debt, propelling Europe into a financial crisis, and contributing to environmental disasters?

But the religious version of Christmas says ''Wait. No.'' It suggests that what is necessary and possible in the world, is an inversion of the faux values of greed, excess and competition so that each of us can derive a worth from who we are, not what we own and consume. It suggests that real values of responsibility, trust, prudence and integrity should be made the pillars on which we build sustainable communities in which to truly live.