At this festive season, thought turns instinctively to the true meaning of Christmas. Without all the present-giving, family gatherings and merry-making, what is left? As ever in time of need, I turned to Mrs. Eddy’s writings to see what she has to say about Christmas.
In her book, Miscellany, our Leader writes in part, “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. Christmas represents the Christ too much to submerge itself in merely temporary means and ends. 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”.
And in a letter to her household in December, 1909, our Leader wrote: “I wish you all a very happy Christmas, a feast of Soul and a famine of sense”.
Christian Scientists often talk about being “in the circle of Love”. At this time, when we are all instructed by the Government to remain alert as we mingle with others, I love to think of us all being in the “bubble of divine Love”...that we “live and move and have our being” in this bubble of Love, tucked up safely “under the shadow of the Almighty”.