Celebrating Christmas

George Shaw Cook

With characteristic consideration Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, authorizes and encourages celebration of Christmas for the children in the following words (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 261): "How shall we cheer the children's Christmas and profit them withal? The wisdom of their elders, who seek wisdom of God, seems to have amply provided for this, according to the custom of the age and to the full supply of juvenile joy. Let it continue thus with one exception: the children should not be taught to believe that Santa Claus has aught to do with this pastime. A deceit or falsehood is never wise." Christian Scientists who are parents, or who have small children in their care, find satisfaction in the wise guidance contained in these words of their Leader on this subject.

Even though children may have learned from Christian Science something of the true spiritual meaning of Christmas, it is not strange that they should still look with delight at the tree lighted for them on Christmas Eve, enjoy the receipt of simple gifts on Christmas morning, and enter happily into the wholesome festivities that follow later in the day. And perhaps no one enjoys these things more than the elders who have provided them.

However, mature Christian Scientists, as the years go by, are increasingly grateful for the wise warning contained in Mrs. Eddy's words (ibid., p. 259): "Certain occasions, considered either collectively or individually and observed properly, tend to give the activity of man infinite scope; but mere merry-making or needless gift-giving is not that in which human capacities find the most appropriate and proper exercise. Christmas respects the Christ too much to submerge itself in merely temporary means and ends." Heeding this admonition, adult Christian Scientists are striving to avoid becoming involved in the emotional sentimentality which sometimes seems to accompany the orthodox and traditional way of observing Christmas. They are trying more and more to lift their thought above the plane of "mere merry-making or needless gift-giving," and this is freeing them, to some extent at least, from bondage to the competitive and comparative sense of giving. They are beginning to see that the most profitably spent Christmas Day is one in which thought is lifted above the human sense of things to the divine Christ, which Jesus demonstrated in healing sickness and sin. Thus their thinking is elevated to a higher plane of consciousness, on which spiritual values transcend the merely human sense of goodness, kindness, generosity, and hospitality. They are learning better to appreciate the words of Paul, "Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth."

Because of a more spiritual concept of Christmas, many Christian Scientists find that their preparations for the Christmas celebration are becoming more and more simple; and in this way they are avoiding some of the rush, the excitement, the perplexity, the strife, and the extravagance that often attend the pre-Christmas period. Likewise, they are becoming less subject to the irritation, the envy, jealousy, fear, disappointment, and regret that often accompany "needless gift-giving," and incidentally less likely to manifest the physical discords that often follow in the train of such disturbed and unhappy thinking.

A more spiritual, scientific, and sane sense of Christmas need not deprive anyone of his true enjoyment of the occasion, or discourage his participation in any of the innocent amusements incidental thereto. Hospitality and good cheer are to be desired, but these need not be allowed to degenerate into "mere merry-making." A merry Christmas is not always a happy one, for, as Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 57): "Happiness is spiritual, born of Truth and Love. It is unselfish; therefore it cannot exist alone, but requires all mankind to share it." May the coming Christmas be for all a truly happy one!

George Shaw Cook

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