Editorial December 20, 1975 Issue

Holy Night

Peter J. Henniker-Heaton

Christmas is something quite other than just one more anniversary. It marks a unique breaking through of eternal values into the time construct of days and months and years, centuries and millennia, that we call human history.

In her book Retrospection and Introspection Mary Baker Eddy writes, "It is well to know, dear reader, that our material, mortal history is but the record of dreams, not of man's real existence, and the dream has no place in the Science of being."^{Ret., p. 21;} To the extent the world in general and each one of us individually grasp the true significance of Christmas we begin to awake from this record of dreams that, like a scratched phonograph disc, goes on endlessly repeating its faults and failures. Through the healing and saving Christ we awake from sickness and frailty and frustration and the whole catalog of self-defeating materiality to the daylight of full and useful spiritual living.

"Silent night! holy night!"—these words of a loved carol sum up for many the essence of Christmas. How silent and still that first Christmas night really was is problematical. The inn at Bethlehem crowded. Shepherds hearing the summons and salutation of angels. Wise men hastening along trails from the East. Animals possibly made restive by strange happenings in the stable or cave where Mary and Joseph watched by the manger.

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