What Christmas Means To Me and Other Christmas Messages

by Mary Baker Eddy




Table of Contents






What Christmas Means To Me


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

God creates man perfect and eternal in His own image. Hence man is the image, idea, or likeness of perfection — an ideal which cannot fall from its inherent unity with divine Love, from its spotless purity and original perfection.

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 village.

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.

Human doctrines or hypotheses or vague human philosophy afford little divine effulgence, deific presence or power. Christmas to me is the reminder of God's great gift, — His spiritual idea, man and the universe, — a gift which so transcends mortal, material, sensual giving that the merriment, mad ambition, rivalry, and ritual of our common Christmas seem a human mockery in mimicry of the real worship in commemoration of Christ's coming.

I love to observe Christmas in quietude, humility, benevolence, charity, letting good will towards man, eloquent silence, prayer, and praise express my conception of Truth's appearing.

The splendor of this nativity of Christ reveals infinite meanings and gives manifold blessings. Material gifts and pastimes tend to obliterate the spiritual idea in consciousness, leaving one alone and without His glory.






A Christmas Sermon


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Delivered in Chickering Hall, Boston, Mass., on the Sunday Before Christmas, 1888

SUBJECT: The Corporeal and Incorporeal Saviour

TEXT: For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.—ISAIAH ix. 6.

To the senses, Jesus was the son of man: in Science, man is the son of God. The material senses could not cognize the Christ, or Son of God: it was Jesus’ approximation to this state of being that made him the Christ-Jesus, the Godlike, the anointed.

The prophet whose words we have chosen for our text, prophesied the appearing of this dual nature, as both human and divinely endowed, the personal and the impersonal Jesus.

The only record of our Master as a public benefactor, or personal Saviour, opens when he was thirty years of age; owing in part, perhaps, to the Jewish law that none should teach or preach in public under that age. Also, it is natural to conclude that at this juncture he was specially endowed with the Holy Spirit; for he was given the new name, Messiah, or Jesus Christ,—the God-anointed; even as, at times of special enlightenment, Jacob was called Israel; and Saul, Paul.

The third event of this eventful period,—a period of such wonderful spiritual import to mankind!—was the advent of a higher Christianity.

From this dazzling, God-crowned summit, the Nazarene stepped suddenly before the people and their schools of philosophy; Gnostic, Epicurean, and Stoic. He must stem these rising angry elements, and walk serenely over their fretted, foaming billows.

Here the cross became the emblem of Jesus’ history; while the central point of his Messianic mission was peace, good will, love, teaching, and healing.

Clad with divine might, he was ready to stem the tide of Judaism, and prove his power, derived from Spirit, to be supreme; lay himself as a lamb upon the altar of materialism, and therefrom rise to his nativity in Spirit.

The corporeal Jesus bore our infirmities, and through his stripes we are healed. He was the Way-shower, and suffered in the flesh, showing mortals how to escape from the sins of the flesh.

There was no incorporeal Jesus of Nazareth. The spiritual man, or Christ, was after the similitude of the Father, without corporeality or finite mind.

Materiality, worldliness, human pride, or self-will, by demoralizing his motives and Christlikeness, would have dethroned his power as the Christ.

To carry out his holy purpose, he must be oblivious of human self.

Of the lineage of David, like him he went forth, simple as the shepherd boy, to disarm the Goliath. Panoplied in the strength of an exalted hope, faith, and understanding, he sought to conquer the three-in-one of error: the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Three years he went about doing good. He had for thirty years been preparing to heal and teach divinely; but his three-years mission was a marvel of glory: its chaplet, a grave to mortal sense dishonored—from which sprang a sublime and everlasting victory!

He who dated time, the Christian era, and spanned eternity, was the meekest man on earth. He healed and taught by the wayside, in humble homes: to arrant hypocrite and to dull disciples he explained the Word of God, which has since ripened into interpretation through Science.

His words were articulated in the language of a declining race, and committed to the providence of God. In no one thing seemed he less human and more divine than in his unfaltering faith in the immortality of Truth. Referring to this, he said, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away!” and they have not: they still live; and are the basis of divine liberty, the medium of Mind, the hope of the race.

Only three years a personal Saviour! yet the foundations he laid are as eternal as Truth, the chief corner-stone.

After his brief brave struggle, and the crucifixion of the corporeal man, the incorporeal Saviour—the Christ or spiritual idea which leadeth into all Truth—must needs come in Christian Science, demonstrating the spiritual healing of body and mind.

This idea or divine essence was, and is, forever about the Father’s business; heralding the Principle of health, holiness, and immortality.

Its divine Principle interprets the incorporeal idea, or Son of God; hence the incorporeal and corporeal are distinguished thus: the former is the spiritual idea that represents divine good, and the latter is the human presentation of goodness in man. The Science of Christianity, that has appeared in the ripeness of time, reveals the incorporeal Christ; and this will continue to be seen more clearly until it be acknowledged, understood,—and the Saviour, which is Truth, be comprehended.

To the vision of the Wisemen, this spiritual idea of the Principle of man or the universe, appeared as a star. At first, the babe Jesus seemed small to mortals; but from the mount of revelation, the prophet beheld it from the beginning as the Redeemer, who would present a wonderful manifestation of Truth and Love.

In our text Isaiah foretold, “His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.”

As the Wisemen grew in the understanding of Christ, the spiritual idea, it grew in favor with them. Thus it will continue, as it shall become understood, until man be found in the actual likeness of his Maker. Their highest human concept of the man Jesus, that portrayed him as the only Son of God, the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and Truth, will become so magnified to human sense, by means of the lens of Science, as to reveal man collectively, as individually, to be the son of God.

The limited view of God’s ideas arose from the testimony of the senses. Science affords the evidence that God is the Father of man, of all that is real and eternal. This spiritual idea that the personal Jesus demonstrated, casting out evils and healing, more than eighteen centuries ago, disappeared by degrees; both because of the ascension of Jesus, in which it was seen that he had grown beyond the human sense of him, and because of the corruption of the Church.

The last appearing of Truth will be a wholly spiritual idea of God and of man, without the fetters of the flesh, or corporeality. This infinite idea of infinity will be, is, as eternal as its divine Principle. The daystar of this appearing is the light of Christian Science—the Science which rends the veil of the flesh from top to bottom. The light of this revelation leaves nothing that is material; neither darkness, doubt, disease, nor death. The material corporeality disappears; and individual spirituality, perfect and eternal, appears—never to disappear.

The truth uttered and lived by Jesus, who passed on and left to mortals the rich legacy of what he said and did, makes his followers the heirs to his example; but they can neither appreciate nor appropriate his treasures of Truth and Love, until lifted to these by their own growth and experiences. His goodness and grace purchased the means of mortals’ redemption from sin; but, they never paid the price of sin. This cost, none but the sinner can pay; and accordingly as this account is settled with divine Love, is the sinner ready to avail himself of the rich blessings flowing from the teaching, example, and suffering of our Master.

The secret stores of wisdom must be discovered, their treasures reproduced and given to the world, before man can truthfully conclude that he has been found in the order, mode, and virgin origin of man according to divine Science, which alone demonstrates the divine Principle and spiritual idea of being.

The monument whose finger points upward, commemorates the earthly life of a martyr; but this is not all of the philanthropist, hero, and Christian. The Truth he has taught and spoken lives, and moves in our midst a divine afflatus. Thus it is that the ideal Christ—or impersonal infancy, manhood, and womanhood of Truth and Love—is still with us.

And what of this child?—“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder.”

This child, or spiritual idea, has evolved a more ready ear for the overture of angels and the scientific understanding of Truth and Love. When Christ, the incorporeal idea of God, was nameless, and a Mary knew not how to declare its spiritual origin, the idea of man was not understood. The Judæan religion even required the Virgin-mother to go to the temple and be purified, for having given birth to the corporeal child Jesus, whose origin was more spiritual than the senses could interpret. Like the leaven that a certain woman hid in three measures of meal, the Science of God and the spiritual idea, named in this century Christian Science, is leavening the lump of human thought, until the whole shall be leavened and all materialism disappear. This action of the divine energy, even if not acknowledged, has come to be seen as diffusing richest blessings. This spiritual idea, or Christ, entered into the minutiæ of the life of the personal Jesus. It made him an honest man, a good carpenter, and a good man, before it could make him the glorified.

The material questions at this age on the reappearing of the infantile thought of God’s man, are after the manner of a mother in the flesh, though their answers pertain to the spiritual idea, as in Christian Science:—

Is he deformed?

He is wholly symmetrical; the one altogether lovely.

Is the babe a son, or daughter?

Both son and daughter: even the compound idea of all that resembles God.

How much does he weigh?

His substance outweighs the material world.

How old is he?

Of his days there is no beginning and no ending.

What is his name?

Christ Science.

Who are his parents, brothers, and sisters?

His Father and Mother are divine Life, Truth, and Love; and they who do the will of his Father are his is brethren.

Is he heir to an estate?

“The government shall be upon his shoulder!” He has dominion over the whole earth; and in admiration of his origin, he exclaims, “I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes!”

Is he wonderful?

His works thus prove him. He giveth power, peace, and holiness; he exalteth the lowly; he giveth liberty to the captive, health to the sick, salvation from sin to the sinner—and overcometh the world!

Go, and tell what things ye shall see and hear: how the blind, spiritually and physically, receive sight; how the lame, those halting between two opinions or hobbling on crutches, walk; how the physical and moral lepers are cleansed; how the deaf—those who, having ears, hear not, and are afflicted with “tympanum on the brain”—hear; how the dead, those buried in dogmas and physical ailments, are raised; that to the poor— the lowly in Christ, not the man-made rabbi—the gospel is preached. Note this: only such as are pure in spirit, emptied of vainglory and vain knowledge, receive Truth.

Here ends the colloquy; and a voice from heaven seems to say, “Come and see.”

The nineteenth-century prophets repeat, “Unto us a son is given.”

The shepherds shout, “We behold the appearing of the star!”—and the pure in heart clap their hands.






Christmas


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This interesting day, crowned with the history of Truth’s idea,—its earthly advent and nativity,—is especially dear to the heart of Christian Scientists; to whom Christ’s appearing in a fuller sense is so precious, and fraught with divine benedictions for mankind.

The star that looked lovingly down on the manger of our Lord, lends its resplendent light to this hour: the light of Truth, to cheer, guide, and bless man as he reaches forth for the infant idea of divine perfection dawning upon human imperfection,—that calms man’s fears, bears his burdens, beckons him on to Truth and Love and the sweet immunity these bring from sin, sickness, and death.

This polar star, fixed in the heavens of divine Science, shall be the sign of his appearing who “healeth all our diseases;” it hath traversed night, wading through darkness and gloom, on to glory. It doth meet the antagonism of error; addressing to dull ears and undisciplined beliefs words of Truth and Life.

The star of Bethlehem is the star of Boston, high in the zenith of Truth’s domain, that looketh down on the long night of human beliefs, to pierce the darkness and melt into dawn.

The star of Bethlehem is the light of all ages; is the light of Love, to-day christening religion undefiled, divine Science; giving to it a new name, and the white stone in token of purity and permanence.

The wise men follow this guiding star; the watchful shepherd chants his welcome over the cradle of a great truth, and saith, “Unto us a child is born,” whose birth is less of a miracle than eighteen centuries ago; and “his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.”

My heart is filled with joy, that each receding year sees the steady gain of Truth’s idea in Christian Science; that each recurring year witnesses the balance adjusted more on the side of God, the supremacy of Spirit; as shown by the triumphs of Truth over error, of health over sickness, of Life over death, and of Soul over sense.

“The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.” “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” “Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

Press on, press on! ye sons of light, Untiring in your holy fight, Still treading each temptation down, And battling for a brighter crown.






The Cry Of Christmas-Tide


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Metaphysics, not physics, enables us to stand erect on sublime heights, surveying the immeasurable universe of Mind, peering into the cause which governs all effects, while we are strong in the unity of God and man. There is “method” in the “madness” of this system,—since madness it seems to many onlookers. This method sits serene at the portals of the temple of thought, while the leaders of materialistic schools indulge in mad antics. Metaphysical healing seeks a wisdom that is higher than a rhubarb tincture or an ipecacuanha pill. This method is devout enough to trust Christ more than it does drugs.

Meekly we kneel at our Master’s feet, for even a crumb that falleth from his table. We are hungry for Love, for the white-winged charity that heals and saves; we are tired of theoretic husks,—as tired as was the prodigal son of the carobs which he shared with the swine, to whom he fed that wholesome but unattractive food. Like him, we would find our Father’s house again— the perfect and eternal Principle of man. We thirst for inspiring wine from the vine which our Father tends. We crave the privilege of saying to the sick, when their feebleness calls for help, “Rise and walk.” We rejoice to say, in the spirit of our Master, “Stretch forth thy hand, and be whole!”

When the Pharisees saw Jesus do such deeds of mercy, they went away and took counsel how they might remove him. The antagonistic spirit of evil is still abroad; but the greater spirit of Christ is also abroad,—risen from the grave-clothes of tradition and the cave of ignorance. Let the sentinels of Zion’s watch-towers shout once again, “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.”

In different ages the divine idea assumes different forms, according to humanity’s needs. In this age it assumes, more intelligently than ever before, the form of Christian healing. This is the babe we are to cherish. This is the babe that twines its loving arms about the neck of omnipotence, and calls forth infinite care from His loving heart.






Extract from the Message to the Mother Church, 1898


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Beloved brethren, another Christmas has come and gone. Has it enabled us to know more of the healing Christ that saves from sickness and sin? Are we still searching diligently to find where the young child lies, and are we satisfied to know that our sense of Truth is not demoralized, finitized, cribbed, or cradled, but has risen to grasp the spiritual idea unenvironed by materiality? Can we say with the angels to-day: "He is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him"? Yes, the real Christian Scientist can say his Christ is risen and is not the material Christ of creeds, but is Truth, even as Jesus declared; and the sense of Truth of the real Christian Scientist is spiritualized to behold this Christ, Truth, again healing the sick and saving sinners. The mission of our Master was to all mankind, and included the very hearts that rejected it — that refused to see the power of Truth in healing.






Early Chimes, December 1898


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Before the Christmas bells shall ring, allow me to improvise some new notes, not specially musical to be sure, but admirably adapted to the key of my feeling and emphatically phrasing strict observance or note well.

This year, my beloved Christian Scientists, you must grant me my request that I be permitted total exemption 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 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, achievements, and aid.






Christmas, 1900


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Again loved Christmas is here, full of divine benedictions 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 springs aside at the touch of Love. We count our blessings and see whence they came and whither they tend. Parents call home their loved ones, the Yule-fires burn, the festive boards are spread, the gifts glow in the dark green branches of the Christmas-tree. But alas for the broken household band! God give to them more of 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 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 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. 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 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 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 declare Christ's power, and the reign of Truth and Life divine should make man's being pure and blest.






Christmas Gifts


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Beloved Students: — For your manifold Christmas memorials, too numerous to name, I group you in one benison and send you my Christmas gift, two words enwrapped, — love and thanks.

To-day Christian Scientists have their record in the monarch's palace, the Alpine hamlet, the Christian traveller's resting-place. Wherever the child looks up in prayer, or the Book of Life is loved, there the sinner is reformed and the sick are healed. Those are the "signs 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.

This period, so fraught with opposites, seems illuminated for woman's hope with divine light. It bids her bind the tenderest tendril of the heart to all of holiest 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 resurrection 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 before 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 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 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 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 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.

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 my studio; look again at your gift, and you will see the sweetest sculptured face and form conceivable, mounted 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, Great Britain, I received the following cabled message: —


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

Loving, grateful Christmas greetings from members London, England, church.

December 24, 1901


To this church across the sea I return my heart's wireless love. All our dear churches' Christmas telegrams to me are refreshing and most pleasing Christmas presents, 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 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.






The Significance of Christmas


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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. It represents the eternal informing Soul recognized only in harmony, in the beauty and bounty of Life everlasting, — in the truth that is Life, the Life that heals and saves mankind. An eternal Christmas would make matter an alien save as phenomenon, and matter would reverentially withdraw itself before Mind. The despotism of material 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.

In Christian Science, Christmas stands for the real, the absolute and eternal, — for the things of Spirit, not of matter. Science is divine; it hath no partnership with human means and ends, no half-way stations. Nothing conditional or material belongs to it. Human reason and philosophy may pursue paths devious, the line of liquids, the lure of gold, the doubtful sense that falls short of substance, the things hoped for and the evidence unseen.

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. The basis of Christmas is love loving its enemies, returning good for evil, love that "suffereth long, and is kind." The true spirit of Christmas elevates medicine to Mind; it casts out evils, heals the sick, raises the dormant faculties, appeals to all conditions, and supplies every need of 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.

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.






Christmas for the Children


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Methinks the loving parents and guardians of youth ofttimes query: 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. Too much cannot be done towards guarding and guiding well the germinating and inclining thought of childhood. To mould aright the first impressions of innocence, aids in perpetuating purity and in unfolding the immortal model, man 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 childish things."

Pleasant View, Concord, N. H., December 28, 1905






Extract from A Christmas Letter


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Beloved Students: — My heart has many rooms: one of these is sacred to the memory of my students. Into this upper chamber, where all things are pure and of good report, — into this sanctuary of love, — I often retreat, sit silently, and ponder. In this chamber is memory’s wardrobe, where I deposit certain recollections and rare grand collections once in each year. This is my Christmas storehouse. Its goods commemorate, — not so much the Bethlehem babe, as the man of God, the risen Christ, and the adult Jesus. Here I deposit the gifts that my dear students offer at the shrine of Christian Science, and to their lone Leader. Here I talk once a year, — and this is a bit of what I said in 1890: “O glorious Truth! O Mother Love! how has the sense of Thy children grown to behold Thee! and how have many weary wings sprung upward! and how has our Model, Christ, been unveiled to us, and to the age!”

I look at the rich devices in embroidery, silver, gold, and jewels, — all gifts of Christian Scientists from all parts of our nation, and some from abroad, — then almost marvel at the power and permanence of affection under the régime of Christian Science! Never did gratitude and love unite more honestly in uttering the word thanks, than ours at this season. But a mother’s love behind words has no language; it may give no material token, but lives steadily on, through time and circumstance, as part and paramount portion of her being.

Thus may our lives flow on in the same sweet rhythm of head and heart, till they meet and mingle in bliss supernal. There is a special joy in knowing that one is gaining constantly in the knowledge of Truth and divine Love. Your progress, the past year, has been marked. It satisfies my present hope. Of this we rest assured, that every trial of our faith in God makes us stronger and firmer in understanding and obedience.

Lovingly yours, 
Mary Baker G. Eddy






Mrs. Eddy's Christmas Message


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My Household

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

Lovingly thine, 
Mary Baker Eddy

Box G, Brookline, Mass.,
 December 25, 1909