On Christmas morning when children all over the world, the lucky ones that is, awake starry-eyed to see what Father Christmas has delivered, bear this in mind: for every child to whom he brings a gift, there is another child — the one that Santa Claus forgot.

Of the 2.2 billion children in the world, one billion live in abject poverty — without shelter, safe water and proper health.

For the 1.9 billion children in the developing world there are: 640 million without a roof over their heads (one in three); 400 million with no drinking water (one in five) and 270 million with absolutely no access to any kind of health service.

As a result, 34,000 of the world's children, under the age of five, will die on Christmas Day, as do 34,000 every day, from disease and malnutrition. That's a child every four seconds.

As children clamber round the tree and tear into their new toys and you reach for the salts to immunise yourself against the excesses of a Christmas Eve drink-too-many, consider this; 2.2 million children die each year because they have no immunisation.

For many it can be a slow, debilitating death from diarrhoea — a common enough, though curable, complaint for some of us enduring the festive frenzy.

As you welcome friends and neighbours who call on the Big Day, some with children in tow, ponder this: more than 13.4 million children under the age of 15 have lost their parents in the last six years, orphaned by Aids. After their loss of parents, children often are forced onto the street, while older children must eke out an existence to support their siblings.

About 2,000 children will be infected with HIV on Christmas Day, as they are each and every day. Many are babies infected through breast milk.

As you baste the turkey and pour yourself a glass of Pinot Grigio and read the back of the label, as one does, remember this: almost one billion people, including 130 million children, entered the 21st century unable to sign their name, let alone read a label.

Today, more than 128 million children do not attend school, two-thirds of them female.

When you get a moment to put your feet up and scan this paper to see which TV movie you will watch, romcom or war movie, about 110 million landmines lie waiting on Christmas Day for children, whose natural curiosity and inability to identify warning signs, makes them sitting turkeys.

That Christmas song by John Lennon got it so wrong. The war isn't over.

Two-thirds of the world's children — some 1.5 billion — live in countries affected by violent conflict, while in the past 10 years more than two million have been killed in war, another million orphaned, and another four million subjected to physical mutilation that doesn't bear thinking about.

Let us remember too all the children of Northern Ireland who in the past 12 months have had their lives cruelly snatched from them.

Among those children are three-year-old Fermanagh girl Rebecca Johnston who died just days into this year from burns suffered when a small candle in her home set her dress alight and Tyrone children Eamon (11) and Emma (13) Sweeney who died in a road accident as did Nicola Murray (16), also from Co Tyrone.

Three-month old Neisha Meehan also died on our roads with her teenage mother Kerry-Ann (16).

Summer holidays turned to tragedy for Londonderry boy Nathan Sharkey (6) who died in a swimming accident in Portugal while west Belfast teenager Padraig Burns (16) fell to his death from a balcony in Benidorm.

Baby Cameron Leslie (14 weeks) died in tragic circumstances in Newtownabbey; Anna Lee Harkin (10 months) died in a fire at her home in Springfarm Estate in Antrim; and Adam Strain (4) from Belfast and 17-month-old Fermanagh baby Lucy Crawford died in hospital after routine surgery.

For the families of these children, and those of 16-year-old Ciara Park killed on Belfast's Royal Ave last month and Eamon McIntyre (17) killed in a car crash near Garvagh and friends Nathan Gault (15) and Debbie Whyte (14) killed on the road in Florencecourt Co Fermanagh, somehow Christmas will never be the same again.

Gone is their laughter and joy at awakening on Christmas morning.

Still, this shouldn't stop us having a great day writ large in largesse. After all, Father Christmas has come and our turkeys are well and truly cooked.

It's just a shame — even sad — about the ones that Santa Claus forgot.

But sure he can't be expected to get around to them all, now, can he?

Happy Christmas? A Peaceful Christmas? Joy to the world? Somehow, it all jars a wee tad.

SOURCES; Unicef Ireland; the World Bank; United Nations; Save the Children; International Labour Organisation; Child Rights Information Network; National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases