Editorial December 5, 1936 Issue

Celebrating Christmas

George Shaw Cook

With characteristic consideration Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, authorizes and encourages celebration of Christmas for the children in the following words (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 261): "How shall we cheer the children's Christmas and profit them withal? The wisdom of their elders, who seek wisdom of God, seems to have amply provided for this, according to the custom of the age and to the full supply of juvenile joy. Let it continue thus with one exception: the children should not be taught to believe that Santa Claus has aught to do with this pastime. A deceit or falsehood is never wise." Christian Scientists who are parents, or who have small children in their care, find satisfaction in the wise guidance contained in these words of their Leader on this subject.

Even though children may have learned from Christian Science something of the true spiritual meaning of Christmas, it is not strange that they should still look with delight at the tree lighted for them on Christmas Eve, enjoy the receipt of simple gifts on Christmas morning, and enter happily into the wholesome festivities that follow later in the day. And perhaps no one enjoys these things more than the elders who have provided them.

However, mature Christian Scientists, as the years go by, are increasingly grateful for the wise warning contained in Mrs. Eddy's words (ibid., p. 259): "Certain occasions, considered either collectively or individually and observed properly, tend to give the activity of man infinite scope; but mere merry-making or needless gift-giving is not that in which human capacities find the most appropriate and proper exercise. Christmas respects the Christ too much to submerge itself in merely temporary means and ends." Heeding this admonition, adult Christian Scientists are striving to avoid becoming involved in the emotional sentimentality which sometimes seems to accompany the orthodox and traditional way of observing Christmas. They are trying more and more to lift their thought above the plane of "mere merry-making or needless gift-giving," and this is freeing them, to some extent at least, from bondage to the competitive and comparative sense of giving. They are beginning to see that the most profitably spent Christmas Day is one in which thought is lifted above the human sense of things to the divine Christ, which Jesus demonstrated in healing sickness and sin. Thus their thinking is elevated to a higher plane of consciousness, on which spiritual values transcend the merely human sense of goodness, kindness, generosity, and hospitality. They are learning better to appreciate the words of Paul, "Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth."

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Celebrating Christmas

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