Editorial December 16, 1905 Issue

The Significance of Christmas

MARY BAKER G. EDDY with contributions from Editor

This article was later republished in The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany: My. 259:21-260:32

IN the Christmas Section of the New York World of December 10, there appeared a symposium entitled, "The Significance of Christmas. Notable Comments by Prominent Representatives of Different Creeds," to which Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy contributed an article worthy of notice for the exalted spiritual concept of Christ and of Christmas which it presents. The teachings of this article should not fail to elevate the world's thought of Christmas from a material to a spiritual plane. Mrs. Eddy's article follows:—

Certain occasions, considered collectively, individually, and observed properly, tend to give the activity of man infinite scope; but mere merry making or needless gift giving is not that wherein human capacities find the most appropriate and proper exercise. Christmas respects the Christ too much to submerge itself in merely temporary means and ends. It represents the eternal informing Soul recognized only in harmony, in the beauty and bounty of Life everlasting,—the truth that is Life,—the Life that heals and saves mankind. An eternal Christmas would make matter an alien save as phenomenon, and matter would reverentially withdraw itself before Mind. The despotism of material sense, or the flesh, would flee before such reality to make room for substance, and the shadow of frivolity and inaccuracy of material sense would disappear.

Christmas, in Christian Science, stands for the real, the absolute and eternal,—the things of Spirit, not matter. Science is divine; it hath no partnership with human means and ends, no half-way stations, nothing conditional or material belongs to it. Human reason and philosophy may pursue paths devious, the line of liquids, the lure of gold, the doubtful sense that falls short of substance—the things hoped for and evidence unseen.

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