The custom of bestowing gifts upon loved ones at the Christmas season has become so materialized in the thought of many that to them the prompting spiritual significance of Christmas giving has been almost, if not quite, lost sight of. In an article entitled "What Christmas Means to Me," now available in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (pp. 261–263), Mrs. Eddy gives an appraisal of Christmas which lifts thought above the material symbol to the spiritual substance of God's gift to mankind. Therein she states: "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." Inasmuch as the "nativity of Christ" promises and bestows so much of good, as our Leader indicates, it needs to be understood so that its blessings may be appreciated and appropriated.
The birth of Jesus was properly hailed by the Wisemen as a momentous event, and was acclaimed to the watchful shepherds by a heavenly host of angelic messengers "praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." This angelic song was truly a prophetic promise of the purpose, nature, and effect of the message and mission of the Nazarene. For all our Master's instructions were to the glorification of God, his Father and our Father, and likewise he properly accorded to divine Mind the credit, praise, and glory for all his demonstrations over sorrow, sickness, sin, limitation and death. When he was hailed as "Good Master," Jesus promptly voiced this corrective word: "Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God." He proved the omnipotence of God's good will for all—"good will toward men"—when he rebuked and annulled every phase of human will or material belief.
Great and wonderful were the gifts of peace, providence, and power, of health, harmony, and happiness, which Jesus brought to the world! All these gifts, however, were but evidences of and testimonies to God's greatest gift, the Christ, the full expression of divine Love. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 583) Mrs. Eddy defines "Christ" as "the divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error." The words and works of the Messiah, his life and love, his denials of discord and death, and his demonstrations of harmony and life, all showed that Christ, Truth, destroys the erroneous belief that life and intelligence, causation and consciousness, are incarnate, are in flesh or matter.
