Both the Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, and the leader of Catholics in England and Wales Cardinal Basil Hulme, have described a society bereft of spirituality in their Christmas sermons.

During his Christmas Day service at Canterbury Cathedral, the Dr Carey said the nation was in danger of spiritual sickness.

Dr Carey: Spiritual health is important

He said: "Our spiritual health matters. As a society, if we lose a sense of the importance of faith in God much else is lost with it - morally our compass bearings drift and we lose our way."

He also said that Britain's leaders had ignored society's spiritual well-being.

"Successive governments have taken a commendably close interest in measuring the quality of British life, as a necessary part of the process of trying to improve it.

"But all too often those efforts, those carefully compiled surveys, miss a vital dimension that we all know is central to our sense of well-being and value.

"They take no account of our spiritual health as a nation and of the inward life of each and every one of us round which everything else revolves.

"My hope is that we as a nation will use the opportunities of the coming year in preparing for the millennium to address that imbalance," he told the congregation.

He added that events of 1998 - including natural and economic disasters - only served to reinforce the need for faith in modern life.

'Put Christ back in Christmas'

Hume: God squeezed out

A similar message came from Cardinal Hume. He urged his midnight Mass congregation at London's Westminster Cathedral not to leave out Christ either this Christmas or in the run up to the new Millennium - the 2,000th anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ.

He said: "Look into our shop windows, study our media, ask the reason for any Christmas party. What are you celebrating?

"We have squeezed God out of our culture, and so, paradoxically, we have almost succeeded in removing Christ out of Christmas.

Hume: God squeezed out

"Can you imagine, keeping Christ out of Christmas?" the 75-year-old cardinal asked.

"I want to put Christ back into Christmas."

Cardinal Hume, the Archbishop of Westminster, said present-day society was to blame for the decline of popular Christianity and not Christianity itself for a tired message.

"The good news that God became man is not stale. We are. And we become stale if we do not reflect prayerfully enough, and often enough on the truth that should never cease to amaze us."

"What is there in that for me?" the 75-year-old cardinal asked.