Christmas! Shouldn't that one word fill our hearts with joyous anticipation and deep gratitude? The Christmas season is an opportunity to commemorate the effectiveness of the ever-present Christ, the true, spiritual idea of God. To the individual who understands this it brings an expectancy of unfolding good.
However, others dread the approach of Christmas because it brings either loneliness or the burden of increased family and social obligations. To such a one Christian Science can bring a spiritual peace that will lift him above the disappointing material sense of Christmas. And it will reveal that the season is really what it must be if it is to satisfy his deepest longings—an expression of the Christ.
Several years ago a Christian Scientist had to spend Christmas in a foreign country. The possibilities for a joyous day seemed meager. There were few outward evidences of Christmas in that country, and homesickness argued persistently for control of her thinking. However, just at this time a friend, a Christian Science practitioner, alerted her to the opportunity this occasion gave her to demonstrate her God given freedom from the mortal mind claims of nostalgia and sentimentality.
