The first Christmas. A babe in a manger. The Wisemen bringing costly gifts from the Orient. Lowly shepherds laying their simple offerings at the feet of the child. The hope awakening in the hearts of men that the human Saviour had arrived to deliver men from the bondage of a military dictator.
What is the meaning of this far-off event to you and to me? It signals the breaking up of the materiality which had held men in bondage to sin, sickness, discord, and death for countless ages. It gives promise of universal salvation from all of earth's ills. Expressing her thoughts on the subject of the meaning of Christmas, Mary Baker Eddy writes (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 262), "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."
At the birth of Jesus the evidence of the Christ, his spiritual nature, came to mankind with great power. Throughout his earthly career Jesus manifested the Christ, t he eternal spiritual nature of God. Through his glorious demonstration of the power of Spirit over the flesh he proved that he was one with God. And his example, explained and understood in Christian Science, enables men to follow in his footsteps and to repeat the great works which he performed.
