Article December 6, 1993 Issue

Keep the Christ in Christmas

You can't be deprived of true joy.

Doreen O'Donnell McClurg

I Recall a grade-school teacher writing the word Christmas on the blackboard as one of our spelling words. She then wrote Xmas alongside Christmas, commenting on the increasingly popular commercial use of this term in holiday advertising. To her, the X crossed the word Christ out of Christmas, actually taking the meaning out of the word. I have often thought of this and asked myself, "Am remembering to keep Christ in Christmas?"

At those times I've reminded myself what we are actually celebrating when we celebrate the birth of Jesus. Mary Baker Eddy says in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, "Jesus was the highest human concept of the perfect man." She goes on to explain: "He was inseparable from Christ, the Messiah,—the divine idea of God outside the flesh. This enabled Jesus to demonstrate his control over matter. Angels announced to the Wisemen of old this dual appearing, and angels whisper it, through faith, to the hungering heart in every age" (p. 482). So Christ presents man's perfect spiritual being.

As a spiritual seeker, I am seeking Christ as were the wise men. I am seeking to demonstrate the control of spiritual sense over the material sense of myself. The dawning of Christ in consciousness takes place daily. Each time we follow the leading of Truth, responding to spiritual intuition over material sense testimony, we are bearing witness to the appearing of the Christ.

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