Editorial December 21, 1935 Issue

The True Christmas Spirit

George Shaw Cook

The Christmas spirit is the Christ-spirit, the Christian spirit. It is best made manifest in deeds of kindness, in works of healing, in generous gifts of loving helpfulness to others. Such a Christmas spirit rightly celebrates the birth of him who, in speaking of his true spiritual selfhood, said, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." To the extent, then, that we are bringing to our fellow men a more abundant sense of life, a fuller realization that infinite Life, the source and cause of all being and action, includes for man all that means health, harmony, happiness, joy, and peace, are we celebrating harmony in the way the master Christian would have us celebrate it.

Writing of Christmas on page 260 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany," Mrs. Eddy says, "The true spirit of Christmas elevates medicine to Mind; it casts out evils, heals the sick, raises the dormant faculties, appeals to all conditions, and supplies every need of man." For Christian Scientists to partake of this true spirit of Christmas and to demonstrate in their own human experience and that of others its power to elevate, heal, and save mankind—to supply all the needs of men—it is necessary that they should have the Christ-spirit. For them to be faithful followers of Christ Jesus and do the works which he said should be done by those who believe on—understand—the Christ, it is obligatory that they should discern Christ as the true spiritual idea, expressing exactly the nature of God, Principle, Mind.

This divine Christ, coming to human consciousness, reveals man as the perfect spiritual likeness of his Maker. It shows that man is indeed the blessed child of God, that he is in truth and always has been the image, idea, reflection of Mind. It enables us to see man as Mind expressed or manifested, and so to claim our divine heritage of good, to claim our oneness, our unity, with infinite good, to know and to prove our God-bestowed ability to reflect the divine qualities of purity, righteousness, holiness, completeness, perfection.

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