Article December 19, 1953 Issue

THE REAL MEANING OF CHRISTMAS

RAYMOND F. KELLER

If the glad expectancy that hallows the Christmas season prevailed throughout the year, the promise of the heavenly host (Luke 2:14), "On earth peace, good will toward men," would become a glowing fact. However, bewilderment and a misguided desire for good sometimes turn the longing heart away from the Bethlehem story to a trust in human systems and material possessions for happiness. Ignorance and ponderous materiality would make of Christmas merely a holiday, instead of a model day in which to claim the ever-present healing activity of the Christ.

Defining the eternal nature of Christ and Christmas, Mary Baker Eddy writes in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (pp. 259, 260): "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,—in the truth that is Life, the Life that heals and saves mankind."

The mission of Christ Jesus was not wasted on a prodigal world in the eyes of those who understand that "the eternal informing Soul" means God's everyday healing presence manifested in right ideas in the individual consciousness and awakening mankind to spiritual good. This is the nativity of spiritual sense, the Christ, Truth, which continually springs up in human thought in order to correct the false and reveal the true.

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