As each year the Christmas season passes, many may exclaim, Oh, if we could only have the spirit of Christmas on every day of the year! Through God's great gift to this age of the Christ Science, or Christian Science, mankind is receiving the good tidings of a continuous, eternal Christmas. While we gratefully commemorate at Christmas time the birth of Jesus our Way-shower and his life of practical demonstration of the Christ, obedience to his command that we do the works which he did is the only meaningful celebration of his unique career. This exemplification of his divine teachings makes Christmas a daily, individual experience for every man, woman, and child.
In Christian Science we learn that the Christ is the ever-present, ever-available true idea of God, man, and all creation. In the exact measure that we entertain this Christ we gain the true spirit of Christmas, or the understanding of God's fatherhood, which will lift us above the limitations and frustrations of so-called material existence, above matter and its false laws of sin, disease, and death. Before explaining on page 260 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" that "in Christian Science, Christmas stands for the real, the absolute and eternal,—for the things of Spirit, not of matter," Mary Baker Eddy writes: "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."
It is increasingly voiced in public utterances during the Christmas season that a lasting peace will not be achieved until the spirit of Christmas, of good will, peace, and unselfed love, abides in the hearts of men on every day of the year. Indeed, as the Christ becomes universally understood it will make apparent in international relations the brotherhood of man with one common Father.
