Are you thinking of Christmas simply as a day of festivity, a day for meeting friends and relatives? Are you happy or sad, at home or in far-off lands? Are you mourning for the absent one or fearing for the one far from home? Are you disquieted in any way? If so, let us consider the real meaning of Christmas.
Calvin Coolidge once said of Christmas: "Christmas is not a time or a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and good will, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas. If we think on these things there will be born in us a Saviour and over us all will shine a star—sending its gleam of hope to the world."
Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, in her article entitled "What Christmas Means to Me"(The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p.262), writes in part: "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."
