I often express pure joy in my life, especially around Christmastime, because I love God, and I love Life. I make it a goal to uplift those around me through my joyfulness.
One Christmas, as our family’s traditional activities commenced, I began feeling a lack of joy, and instead, I felt sad. The sadness seemed to stem from feeling as though I wasn’t seeing the real, spiritual meaning of Christmas around me on that special day. The more I believed that I was missing my usual joy, the more I felt as if I wasn’t going to be able to find it and would ultimately end up wasting Christmas Day.
I thought back to a talk I’d had with some friends when we were reading the prophet Joel’s book in the Bible, and how we had discussed this verse: “The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languisheth;… because joy is withered away from the sons of men” (Joel 1:12). I didn’t want to overlook the “fruits”—the true, spiritual gifts of Christmas—because of a lack of joy, but I didn’t know how to bring joy to the day without seeing the spiritual reason for the joy we express.
My mom could tell that something was bothering me, and when I told her what was wrong, she explained to me that the feeling of sadness at Christmas (and really any time) is just a belief of an antichrist that could disrupt the celebration of the Christ light in our lives. I knew that Webster’s 1828 dictionary defines anti-christ as an “adversary of Christ.” And since adversary is another name for “the devil” (see I Peter 5:8), which Christ Jesus defined as a lie, I recognized that the sadness I was feeling was also simply a lie—a false belief I could cast out of my thought immediately with the Christ, the divine Truth that Jesus represented.
I then retired to my room for some alone time to learn more about the Christ—the opposite of antichrist—and to see the joy that the Christ-idea brings to the world. I decided there was no better place to begin to learn more about the Christ, than to start with the story of the nativity of Jesus. So I turned to the second chapter of Luke in my Bible and began reading. I came to the tenth verse: “And the angel said unto them [the shepherds], Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.”
The joy of the Christ is not just for a certain select group of people, but rather, for everyone to feel and to express in their lives.
When I read this passage, I thought of how I was like the shepherds, listening to God’s angelic messages heralding the birth of Jesus, which signaled the great joy of Christ’s presence with humanity. As Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “[Jesus] was appointed to speak God’s word and to appear to mortals in such a form of humanity as they could understand as well as perceive” (p. 332). Like the angel told the shepherds so long ago, the joy of the Christ is not just for a certain select group of people, but rather, for everyone to feel and to express in their lives throughout all time.
I felt tremendously better immediately, and I decided to see what else was written in the Scriptures about the joy that the coming of the Christ brings. Right away, I found in Romans that we “joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (5:11). This meant to me that Christ Jesus, whom we celebrate on Christmas, represents the presence of joy that God imparts to mankind. The joy of the Christ-idea is “forever here and near,” as we sing in Mrs. Eddy’s poem “Christmas Morn,” set to music in the Christian Science Hymnal (No. 23).
I was then ready to return to my family and our activities, filled with a new, spiritual joy that could not be quenched.
That day, I discovered that “murky clouds” of sadness can’t obscure the pure Christ joy.
That day, I discovered that “murky clouds” (Hymn 23) of sadness can’t obscure the pure Christ joy. When we welcome and celebrate the coming of the Christ, we realize that joy is a true gift of God. This inspired idea makes Christmas every day. There’s no missing out on Christmas when we recognize that every time we are uplifted by the pure joy that Christ brings to our lives, we are feeling the blessings of the real sense of Christmas.
