0.0 – Christian Science Publication Contents

                  Chapter XIII 

  	                          CHRISTMAS

1	            EARLY CHIMES, DECEMBER, 1898 

	    Before the Christmas bells shall ring, allow me
 3	to improvise some new notes, not specially musi-
  	cal to be sure, but admirably adapted to the key of my
  	feeling and emphatically phrasing strict observance or
 6	note well. 
  	    This year, my beloved Christian Scientists, you must
  	grant me my request that I be permitted total exemption
 9	from Christmas gifts. Also I beg to send to you all a
  	deep-drawn, heartfelt breath of thanks for those things
  	of beauty and use forming themselves in your thoughts
12	to send to your Leader. Thus may I close the door of
  	mind on this subject, and open the volume of Life on
  	the pure pages of impersonal presents, pleasures, achieve-
15	ments, and aid. 


  	                                   CHRISTMAS, 1900 

  	    Again loved Christmas is here, full of divine benedic-
18	tions and crowned with the dearest memories in human
  	history — the earthly advent and nativity of our Lord
  	and Master. At this happy season the veil of time
21	springs aside at the touch of Love. We count our bless-
  	ings and see whence they came and whither they tend. 
  	Parents call home their loved ones, the Yule-fires burn,
24	the festive boards are spread, the gifts glow in the dark
 
                                                   Christmas Gifts                               257


 1	green branches of the Chris...tmas-tree. But alas for the
  	broken household band! God give to them more of
 3	His dear love that heals the wounded heart. 
  	    To-day the watchful shepherd shouts his welcome over
  	the new cradle of an old truth. This truth has traversed
 6	night, through gloom to glory, from cradle to crown. To
  	the awakened consciousness, the Bethlehem babe has left
  	his swaddling-clothes (material environments) for the
 9	form and comeliness of the divine ideal, which has passed
  	from a corporeal to the spiritual sense of Christ and is
  	winning the heart of humanity with ineffable tenderness. 
12	The Christ is speaking for himself and for his mother,
  	Christ's heavenly origin and aim. To-day the Christ is,
  	more than ever before, "the way, the truth, and the
15	life," — "which lighteth every man that cometh into the
  	world," healing all sorrow, sickness, and sin. To this
  	auspicious Christmastide, which hallows the close of the
18	nineteenth century, our hearts are kneeling humbly. We
  	own his grace, reviving and healing. At this immortal
  	hour, all human hate, pride, greed, lust should bow and
21	declare Christ's power, and the reign of Truth and Life
  	divine should make man's being pure and blest. 


  	                                       CHRISTMAS GIFTS 

24	    Beloved Students: — For your manifold Christmas memo-
  	rials, too numerous to name, I group you in one benison
  	and send you my Christmas gift, two words enwrapped,
27	 — love and thanks. 
  	    To-day Christian Scientists have their record in the
  	monarch's palace, the Alpine hamlet, the Christian trav-
30	eller's resting-place. Wherever the child looks up in
 
                                                                 Miscellany                               258


1	prayer, or the Book of Life is loved, there the sinner is
  	reformed and the sick are healed. Those are the "signs
 3	following." What is it that lifts a system of religion to
  	deserved fame? Nothing is worthy the name of religion
  	save one lowly offering — love. 
 6	    This period, so fraught with opposites, seems illumi-
  	nated for woman's hope with divine light. It bids her
  	bind the tenderest tendril of the heart to all of holiest
 9	worth. To the woman at the sepulchre, bowed in strong
  	affection's anguish, one word, "Mary," broke the gloom
  	with Christ's all-conquering love. Then came her resurrec-
12	tion and task of glory, to know and to do God's will, — 
  	in the words of St. Paul: "Looking unto Jesus the author
  	and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set be-
15	fore him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is
  	set down at the right hand of the throne of God." 
  	    The memory of the Bethlehem babe bears to mortals
18	gifts greater than those of Magian kings, — hopes that
  	cannot deceive, that waken prophecy, gleams of glory,
  	coronals of meekness, diadems of love. Nor should they
21	who drink their Master's cup repine over blossoms that
  	mock their hope and friends that forsake. Divinely
  	beautiful are the Christmas memories of him who sounded
24	all depths of love, grief, death, and humanity. 
  	    To the dear children let me say:  Your Christmas gifts
  	are hallowed by our Lord's blessing. A transmitted
27	charm rests on them. May this consciousness of God's
  	dear love for you give you the might of love, and may
  	you move onward and upward, lowly in its majesty. 
30	    To the children who sent me that beautiful statuette
  	in alabaster — a child with finger on her lip reading a book
  	 — I write:  Fancy yourselves with me; take a peep into
 
                                The Significance of Christmas                   259


 1	my studio; look again at your gift, and you will see the
  	sweetest sculptured face and form conceivable, mounted
 3	on its pedestal between my bow windows, and on either
  	side lace and flowers. I have named it my white student. 
  	    From First Church of Christ, Scientist, in London,
 6	Great Britain, I received the following cabled message: —  

  	REV. MRS. EDDY, PLEASANT VIEW,
  	                Concord, N. H. 

 9	    Loving, grateful Christmas greetings from members
  	London, England, church. 
  	     December 24, 1901 

12	    To this church across the sea I return my heart's wire-
  	less love. All our dear churches' Christmas telegrams to
  	me are refreshing and most pleasing Christmas presents,
15	for they require less attention than packages and give me
  	more time to think and work for others. I hope that in
  	1902 the churches will remember me only thus. Do not
18	forget that an honest, wise zeal, a lowly, triumphant
  	trust, a true heart, and a helping hand constitute man,
  	and nothing less is man or woman. 


21	                                      [New York World] 
  	               THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CHRISTMAS 

  	    Certain occasions, considered either collectively or
24	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 capac-
27	ities find the most appropriate and proper exercise. 
  	Christmas respects the Christ too much to submerge
  	itself in merely temporary means and ends. It represents
30	the eternal informing Soul recognized only in harmony,
 
                                                                 Miscellany                               260


 1	in the beauty and bounty of Life everlasting, — in the
  	truth that is Life, the Life that heals and saves man-
 3	kind. An eternal Christmas would make matter an alien
  	save as phenomenon, and matter would reverentially
  	withdraw itself before Mind. The despotism of material
 6	sense or the flesh would flee before such reality, to make
  	room for substance, and the shadow of frivolity and the
  	inaccuracy of material sense would disappear. 
 9	    In Christian Science, Christmas stands for the real, the
  	absolute and eternal, — for the things of Spirit, not of mat-
  	ter. Science is divine; it hath no partnership with human
12	means and ends, no half-way stations. Nothing condi-
  	tional or material belongs to it. Human reason and phi-
  	losophy may pursue paths devious, the line of liquids, the
15	lure of gold, the doubtful sense that falls short of sub-
  	stance, the things hoped for and the evidence unseen. 
  	    The basis of Christmas is the rock, Christ Jesus; its
18	fruits are inspiration and spiritual understanding of joy
  	and rejoicing, — not because of tradition, usage, or cor-
  	poreal pleasures, but because of fundamental and de-
21	monstrable truth, because of the heaven within us. The
  	basis of Christmas is love loving its enemies, returning
  	good for evil, love that "suffereth long, and is kind." The
24	true spirit of Christmas elevates medicine to Mind; it
  	casts out evils, heals the sick, raises the dormant facul-
  	ties, appeals to all conditions, and supplies every need of
27	man. It leaves hygiene, medicine, ethics, and religion
  	to God and His Christ, to that which is the Way, in word
  	and in deed, — the Way, the Truth, and the Life. 
30	    There is but one Jesus Christ on record. Christ is
  	incorporeal. Neither the you nor the I in the flesh can
  	be or is Christ. 

 
                                The Significance of Christmas                   261


 1	                  CHRISTMAS FOR THE CHILDREN 

  	    Methinks the loving parents and guardians of youth
 3	ofttimes query:  How shall we cheer the children's Christ-
  	mas and profit them withal? The wisdom of their elders,
  	who seek wisdom of God, seems to have amply provided
 6	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
 9	that Santa Claus has aught to do with this pastime. A
  	deceit or falsehood is never wise. Too much cannot be
  	done towards guarding and guiding well the germinating
12	and inclining thought of childhood. To mould aright
  	the first impressions of innocence, aids in perpetu-
  	ating purity and in unfolding the immortal model, man
15	in His image and likeness. St. Paul wrote, "When I
  	was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a
  	child, . . . but when I became a man, I put away
18	childish things." 
  	
       PLEASANT VIEW, CONCORD, N. H.,
  	                December 28, 1905 


21	                             [The Ladies' Home Journal] 

  	                WHAT CHRISTMAS MEANS TO ME 

  	    To me Christmas involves an open secret, understood
24	by few — or by none — and unutterable except in Chris-
  	tian Science. Christ was not born of the flesh. Christ
  	is the Truth and Life born of God — born of Spirit and
27	not of matter. Jesus, the Galilean Prophet, was born
  	of the Virgin Mary's spiritual thoughts of Life and its
  	manifestation. 

 
                                                                 Miscellany                               262


 1	    God creates man perfect and eternal in His own image. 
  	Hence man is the image, idea, or likeness of perfection
 3	 — an ideal which cannot fall from its inherent unity
  	with divine Love, from its spotless purity and original
  	perfection. 
 6	    Observed by material sense, Christmas commemorates
  	the birth of a human, material, mortal babe — a babe
  	born in a manger amidst the flocks and herds of a Jewish
 9	village. 
  	    This homely origin of the babe Jesus falls far short
  	of my sense of the eternal Christ, Truth, never born and
12	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,
15	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. 
18	    Human doctrines or hypotheses or vague human phi-
  	losophy afford little divine effulgence, deific presence or
  	power. Christmas to me is the reminder of God's great
21	gift, — His spiritual idea, man and the universe, — 
  	a gift which so transcends mortal, material, sensual giv-
  	ing that the merriment, mad ambition, rivalry, and
24	ritual of our common Christmas seem a human mock-
  	ery in mimicry of the real worship in commemoration
  	of Christ's coming. 
27	    I love to observe Christmas in quietude, humility,
  	benevolence, charity, letting good will towards man, elo-
  	quent silence, prayer, and praise express my conception
30	of Truth's appearing. 
  	    The splendor of this nativity of Christ reveals infinite
  	meanings and gives manifold blessings. Material gifts
 
                              Mrs. Eddy’s Christmas Message                263


 1	and pastimes tend to obliterate the spiritual idea in con-
  	sciousness, leaving one alone and without His glory. 


 3	                MRS. EDDY'S CHRISTMAS MESSAGE 

  	MY HOUSEHOLD 

  	    Beloved: — A word to the wise is sufficient. Mother
 6	wishes you all a happy Christmas, a feast of Soul and a
  	famine of sense. 
  	                                                Lovingly thine,

 9	                                                     MARY BAKER EDDY 

  	BOX G, BROOKLINE, MASS.,
  	       December 25, 1909
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