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Embracing the “new birth” at Christmas, New Year’s, and always
Have you ever noticed, I mean really paid attention to, the fact that the Christmas and New Year’s Day celebrations are exactly one week apart in much of the world? A bit of online research revealed that there are some possible historical reasons why this is so, but what struck me was that I have never really connected the two in my thought. So I got to wondering if there might not be a blessing in doing so.
I love the idea of celebrating the birth of Christ Jesus. Sure, I enjoy many of the holiday traditions—the music, parties, decorations, and baking. But as I’ve grown spiritually, I find myself more and more attentive to the birth of the spiritual idea to human consciousness that the nativity of Jesus represents.
Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, first pointed my thought in this direction when I read this description of how she liked to celebrate Christmas: “This homely origin of the babe Jesus falls far short of my sense of the eternal Christ, Truth, never born and never dying. I celebrate Christmas with my soul, my spiritual sense, and so commemorate the entrance into human understanding of the Christ conceived of Spirit, of God and not of a woman—as the birth of Truth, the dawn of divine Love breaking upon the gloom of matter and evil with the glory of infinite being” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 262).
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