Christmas Eve candlelight services are my favorite church event. I am fairly sure I have not missed one since I was 13 years old, and the acolyte for the 11 p.m. service on December 24 at First Lutheran Church in Long Beach.

Again, we were at Saint Andrew’s Anglican Church, here in Abu Dhabi.

Again, the place was packed.

Again, I was struck by how the English/British tradition has produced a very different set of Christmas carols to those known in the United States.

Again, I was struck by how enthusiastically everyone sang, considering Anglicans are the Church of England, and in England, almost no one goes to church anymore.

I have a theory on this.

Britain pretty clearly is a post-Christian society. This batch of numbers suggests that only 6 percent of Britons (English, Welsh, Scots, Northern Irish) attend church regularly. (I work with people who have no clear idea about their own religious institutions.)

This second batch of numbers comes from a 2004 Gallup poll, and the assumption is that the numbers in Britain have continued to decline. But when the survey was done, it showed 12 percent of those in the United Kingdom were regular church-goers. Actually a bit ahead of most predominately Protestant countries of Europe.

However, compare that to the 43 percent of Americans, 46 percent of Irish and 63 percent of Poles who are regular church-goers.

So, the volume on Christmas carols … impressive.

My theory is that the British are a musical people (and the Irish, too), and they once did a lot of singing in churches, which most of them attended, pre-20th century, and they have replaced that with singing at soccer games.

(No, really. Listen to an English Premier League match; they sing for nearly all of it. Public singing is in their history; they just do it at Stamford Bridge now, instead of St. Paul’s.)

So, yes, impressed by their singing, even if I would need another decade to get used to their carols — beginning with Once in David’s Royal City, which is unknown in the States, far as I can tell, but Saint Andrew’s opens with it every year. (Five and counting, anyway.)

They invariably do “Away in Manger”, too, but to a different tune.

But when in Abu Dhabi … your church choices are limited, pretty much, to the three churches within a couple hundred yards of each other. I prefer Saint Andrew’s, overall.

I’d guess 250 people were jammed into the room. We were 10 minutes early and were lucky to get a seat.

Reverend Andy, as he prefers to be known, gave a short sermon in which he said we were fortunate to be in the UAE, which allows Christians to worship, and without fear, which is not the case in much of the Middle East. (Many Americans are not aware that classical Muslim cultures, and especially the Arab ones, allowed their citizens to worship as they saw fit, which is why Christian can still be found in nearly every country in the region.)

And then communion … quite a trick with a crowd that large, when you’re giving wine (a Protestant, but not Roman Catholic thing) as well as bread.

Earlier, we had dinner with two of our favorite people, who live near us, and the meal was excellent, and they had purchased the biggest artificial tree you can buy in Abu Dhabi, and it was nicely decorated and lit up. Festive.

They came with us to the church, and the little candles burned just ahead of us, on a ledge atop the pew rail, and it became Christmas Day during the service.

It was nice, and a bit inspirational (all that singing; it was like Liverpool was playing), and it always is a good highlight to the holiday, even far from home.