With four days to go to the big day, far be it from me to pretend to be a holy-roller, much less a spoilsport.

But every year at around this time I wonder how we have managed to transform the simple celebration of a man's birthday into the demented, greedy and gluttonous spending orgy Christmas has become.

Churches may be packed on Christmas Eve but the majority of the congregations treat it as a traditional, social occasion.

Most will not be seen in church again for another year unless they are going to a wedding, christening or funeral. This is not meant as criticism, just an observation from a non-churchgoer.

However, while few would argue that Jesus Christ really was born 2001 years ago in Bethlehem, believers and non-believers still argue endlessly about many aspects of Christianity, especially about the biggest question of all: is there life after death?

So when you have opened your gifts, gorged on the festive food and drink, been to your parties and prepared all your good resolutions in time for New Year's Day, you may care to ponder this rather weightier subject.

Have I gone mad? I can hear you asking. Absolutely not.

Fascinating and compelling new evidence has emerged from a Dutch team with a report showing patients who had survived heart attacks had experienced emotions, visions or lucid thoughts while they were 'clinically dead'.

The evidence from a two-year study in ten Dutch hospitals supporting the view that the mind or, if you like, the soul, can survive death, has been published in Britain's leading medical journal, the Lancet.

The Dutch doctors had studied 344 heart attack survivors who reported having 'out of body' experiences while they were unconscious, with no signs of breathing, pulse or electrical brain activity.

Fascinatingly, the report coincides with a British survey of more than 1,000 people. Ten per cent said they had experienced the sensation of floating out of their bodies. American surveys have produced similar results.

But most intriguing of all is a small project at Southampton Hospital completed last year.

Researchers there, using the latest medical equipment to confirm no signs of pulse or brain activity, said patients should not have been able to perceive anything, yet their recollections were too structured to be hallucinations.

All these findings will be used by academics who believe the mind can continue to function after the brain has stopped.

And without question, there will be church leaders citing it as clear evidence of a soul.

Sceptics will insist it is not evidence of life after death - just that we do not understand as much about the brain as we thought.

But all this accumulating international research into mankind's biggest mystery is becoming more and more compelling, suggesting the man whose birthday we celebrate in four days' time really was telling the truth about the hereafter.

I wish you all a happy Christmas.