Joyous Christmas! I've always loved decorating the house with greenery and candles, sending and receiving Christmas cards, picking out gifts for family and special friends, doing holiday cooking. Christmas is a happy time.

But one year it didn't seem too happy. In fact, it was a big noisy burden. This is a problem many teen-agers face. Once-loved family traditions seem childish. All the noisy little cousins are boring. Aunt Sara never will realize that only children enjoy playing parcheesi, and anyway all teen-agers get to do at family gatherings is wash dishes.

In our teen years we also begin to include activities in our lives that may keep us away from home at Christmas, such as traveling or going off to winter camp. If "there's no place like home for the holidays," how can we be happy far away from those we love?

For me this particular year, Christmas seemed dreary because I had a severe sore throat. On Christmas Eve all the family except Mother and me went to a special Christmas program. I was feeling miserable. Since I attended a Christian Science Sunday School, I had been praying in Christian Science to overcome this physical problem, but I had done it only superficially, because I was so caught up in preparations for Christmas.

After everyone left, I sat down for a quiet talk with my mother. We talked about the spiritual significance of Christmas, and Mother said that when I was completely aware of my true being as an idea of God, the sore throat and all its seeming discomfort would vanish.

We must never become so involved in human activities, no matter how exciting they are, that we lose sight of our identity as God's child. And we must be sure that at all times we are expressing our unity with God. Gift-giving at Christmas is an expression of love; but if we are buying, wrapping, and delivering presents with a feeling of hurry, dread, tension, self-righteousness, there is little room left for love. The act is meaningless. An artistic arrangement of candles, evergreens, and holly is an expression of the beauty of Soul; but if it is made with self-pride or for showiness, its real beauty is missed.

Although it may be a busy time, Christmas is also a time for quiet, peace, love, simplicity. Our holiday happiness need not depend upon human circumstances. Drowning ourselves in self-pity because we feel alone at Christmas—and this feeling of being alone is just as possible when we are with the family as it is if we are an ocean apart—is a denial that the Christ is ever present.

In an article entitled "The Significance of Christmas," Mrs. Eddy writes, "In Christian Science, Christmas stands for the real, the absolute and eternal,—for the things of Spirit, not of matter." ^{The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 260;} Farther down the same page she writes, "The basis of Christmas is the rock, Christ Jesus; its fruits are inspiration and spiritual understanding of joy and rejoicing,—not because of tradition, usage, or corporeal pleasures, but because of fundamental and demonstrable truth, because of the heaven within us." And in a letter to her own household Mrs. Eddy said, "Mother wishes you all a happy Christmas, a feast of Soul and a famine of sense." ^{p. 263;} The Christmas season is a time when all the Christian world pauses to remember the birth of Christ Jesus as an expression of God's love for all.

To the watchful shepherds the angels brought this message: "Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord." ^{Luke 2:10, 11;}

As I thought about Christmas being the commemoration of the birth of Christ Jesus, our Way-shower, I asked myself how he healed. He healed through the realization that man is never separated from God, and he said: "I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son." ^{John 14:12, 13.}

My understanding of this truth dissolved the tension I had built up the past few days; and by the end of Christmas Day I was feeling fine and able to talk. I was grateful for this proof of the healing power of Christian Science, but it was only incidental to what I had learned about Christmas. That Christmas Eve, as Mother and I talked, I felt the presence of the Christ as I never had before. It was a warm, happy awareness.

It truly was Christmas!