Editorial December 21, 1946 Issue

Happy Christmas!

Margaret Morrison

"Happy Christmas!" On December twenty-fifth of each year this greeting is on the lips of countless persons who have determined to make this day a happy one for themselves and others. On this one day there is an effort to put aside fears and animosities, selfishness and gloom, hate and hypocrisy. "It is Christmas Day," we say; "let us have peace in our hearts and good will toward men."

Obviously in what is called an age of materialism this day of celebration of a holy nativity is in danger of becoming a merely pagan festival of merriment, rivalry of gift giving, ritualism, and sensuous indulgence, with a complete forgetfulness or ignorance of its Christian import. While the student of Christian Science will rightfully memorize the birth of Jesus, he will do so with quietude of heart and reverent joy. His human sense of merriment and simple gift giving will based on a clear understanding of true spiritual joy and God's priceless gift to men of the revelation of truth, the spiritual idea of Life made manifest through Christ Jesus.

In his prophecy of the coming of the Messiah or Christ, Isaiah writes: "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: ... and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, ... The Prince of Peace." And on page 109 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy tells of her search for truth, for an understanding of the healing Christ. She says, "The search was sweet, calm, and buoyant with hope, not selfish nor depressing." Later in the same paragraph she continues: "The revelation of Truth in the understanding came to me gradually and apparently through divine power. When a new spiritual idea is borne to earth, the prophetic Scripture of Isaiah is renewedly fulfilled: 'Unto us a child is born, ... and his name shall be called Wonderful.'" This coming of the spiritual idea is the true Christmas—the coming of wise counsel, of peace and wonder—the wonder of the new birth.

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