You may have read in these pages about the Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People, taking place just before Christmas and featuring the likes of Richard Dawkins, Ricky Gervais and Dara O’Briain. But the idea of celebrating the festive season with a clique of smug, illiterate scientists and fat, middle-aged comedians might leave you cold, and possibly faintly nauseous, with the lingering feeling that they haven’t quite got the point of Christmas. You might decide to wait for their next show, a courageous and scathing spoof of Diwali, perhaps, or Yom Kippur, or Ramadan. And you might decide you want to go to church this Christmas after all - just to annoy Richard Dawkins, if nothing else. But where on earth do you start?

It’s safe to say that the Church of England is often at its best at Christmas. Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as a Good Church Guide. (There is a website called www.achurchnearyou.com , though it’s pretty haphazard.) But the C of E is a broad church, with a variety of services and vicars to suit all tastes - and some you might want to avoid.

A number of vicars still think they are stand-up comedians. Some might rejoice and be glad at the prospect of going to church on Christmas morning, as I have done, to find the ceremony led by a hyperactive man in a shiny suit and Frosty the Snowman tie, eschewing traditional clerical vestments for the same reason Bournemouth council eschews Latin: it might alienate us, the great, gormless, unwashed masses. Perhaps a vicar leaping around at the front of the church with a cordless microphone, like a gameshow host on speed, is what you want. But you may find that enduring a service conducted by such a grinning, attention-seeking goon can make it hard to lift your thoughts to higher things.

Then there are those vast, evangelical churches that look like out-of-town DIY superstores, filled with the sound of electric guitars and simple, happy choruses. Not that one should be snobbish, of course. If people want to go to church dressed in polyester loungewear from Matalan, that in no way means they are any less valued in the sight of the Lord. It’s just that some of us want something less like fast food for the soul.

Then again, there’s the risk of turning up at a church to find its Christmas service is entirely aimed at six-year-olds: trite little talks featuring the unwrapping of “presents”, always ending with the reminder that “Jesus is the greatest Christmas present of all, isn’t he, children?” A lot of children might find this grossly condescending anyway, and be much more fascinated by the solemnity and mystery of an uncompromising adult ceremony. If you want something specifically for children, search out a Christingle service near you - usually a lot classier, and one of the better ideas to come out of Germany over the past 100 years or so.

On the other hand, the presence of children and families is central to this festival with an earthly trinity at the heart of it: Mary, Joseph and Jesus. Children also provide many an enjoyable gaffe, if the vicar is foolish enough to turn his sermon into a Q&A session. I remember one vicar holding up a statuette of the Christ child with the orb of the world in his hands, to signify his lordship over the earth, and asking the children what it was. One of my nephews immediately yelled out: “A mince pie!” Christmas services are especially full of these heart-warming little moments of unscripted chaos.

Clergymen of the more puritan tendency will sternly point out that you don’t go to church just to admire the music or the architecture, which one must glumly admit is true. But the aesthetics might at least draw you in. Indeed, in his poem Lenten Thoughts of a High Anglican, St John Betjeman admits that he likes going to church to gaze at the woman whom he nicknames the Mistress, “With her wide-apart grey-green eyes, The droop of her lips and, when she smiles, Her glance of amused surprise”. We are all fallible.

Perhaps all you really want from a church service is some simple dignity and beauty: only what the average mosque or synagogue or Sikh or Hindu temple still offer, with no apparent sense that they should update their style to resemble the world of 21st-century tele-vision. And in that case, you are pretty much guaranteed quality with a service in any cathedralor abbey, or, if you live near Oxford or Cambridge, a college chapel.

Pace the puritans, the music and singing around Christmas-time is about as good as it gets, from the medieval mournfulness of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel at the start of Advent, to the full-throated bawling of O Come, All Ye Faithful on Christmas Day itself. Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve is also terrific, the air filled with enthusiastic, if unprac-tised, voices and the heady aroma of mulled wine. Lusty hymn-singing is excellent for the health, and a lot more fun than all those “10day detox plans” that appear after new year.

There aren’t many other opportunities for a communal sing-along nowadays except on the football terraces or at Mamma Mia!, and some of the best carols are as good as anything Benny and Björn wrote. In the Bleak Midwinter, recently voted the best carol, never fails to stir something deeper than Dawkins would even claim to understand, while belting out some rousing number such as Hark! The Herald Angels Sing at top volume, along with several hundred like-minded people, fills you with the sort of triumphalist fervour that makes you want to march off and invade a small country.

You can go to church whether you believe or whether you don’t, and especially if you’re not really sure. They say the church is the only organisation in the world that exists for the sake of those who don’t belong to it. Apart from anything else, it offers a kind of comfort that you simply don’t find on a Sunday pilgrimage to the Westfield shopping centre - not even with all those wonderful sale bargains on offer.

Carols by Candlelight is perhaps the most richly symbolic of all Christmas services. The church is sunk in utter darkness before a single candle is lit, and then passed from one shakily held taper to the next. Everyone waits patiently and silently, hearing the ancient and sonorous reading from the Book of Isaiah, “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light”, as the next row of tapers flares into life, and then the next, a gentle wave of light spreading through the entire church. This can be churchgoing at its best, enacting a ritual that is solemn, dignified, and having some effect on your agnostic soul that can barely be put into words. But it has something to do with the light dwelling in the darkness, and the darkness not overcoming it.

Showing at a church near you this Christmas...

Sherborne Abbeywas founded in AD705 by St Aldhelm, patron saint of musicians and songwriters. Its elaborately carved interior, says Simon Jenkins, compares with “any contemporary work of the Italian Renaissance”. It has a Carol Service today at 3pm, the Blessing of the Crib and Lighting of the Christmas Tree at 5pm on Christmas Eve, and Midnight Mass at 11.30pm.

York Minsterhas a Christingle Service today at 2.30pm, Nine Lessons and Carols tomorrow at 7pm, a Crib Service at 11.30pm on Christmas Eve, and Matins at 11.30am on Christmas Day.

Durham Cathedralhas a service of Nine Lessons and Carols tomorrow at 7pm, and another on Christmas Eve at 3pm. Midnight Mass is at 11pm.

Oxford and Cambridge chapels:avoid the most popular, unless you enjoy queuing. King’s College Cambridge advises for its Nine Lessons and Carols that “anyone joining the queue before 9am will gain admission, but it is not guaranteed”.The service starts at 3pm.

St Mary’s, Warwickis a rare Simon Jenkins five-star church, with its stunning medieval Beauchamp Chantry. There are Candlelit Carols tonight at 6.30pm, again on Tuesday at 8pm, and on Christmas Eve a Crib Service at 4pm and Midnight Mass at 11.15pm.

Canterbury Cathedral’s Christmas Eve service is sold out, but the 7.30pm service on Tuesday is first come, first served. Wrap up warm, bring a flask and prepare to queue for an hour. The choir is world-class.

Westminster Abbey’s Lessons and Carols start at 4pm on Christmas Eve p- go early.

St Paul’shas a Carol Service at 4pm on Tuesday, Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve at 11.30pm, and Christmas Day services at 8am, 11am and 3.15pm.

And don’t neglect your humble parish church: check the local press or noticeboards for details of services.