Looking for Christmas decorations in a store earlier this week, I was disappointed to find many Santa Claus items and not any nativity scenes. I'm sure there are lots of other shops where I could find a nativity scene, but it made me stop to consider what I was really looking for. And of course, it's the qualities of peace, joy, and love, among many others. I was also thinking that the "Christ" cannot be taken out of the word Christmas, ever.
What I most love is that Christmas is so often defined by LIGHT, which Webster defines as something which makes vision possible, dawn, spiritual illumination.
In Mary Baker Eddy's poem Christmas Morn from December 1898, we read that even though "murky clouds" are overhead, neither "dawn nor day" can be shrouded (enshroud has the same meaning as shroud i.e. cut off from view, screened, veiled under another appearance - Webster). And there's not even a hint of mortality for the Christ - "no cradle song", "no natal hour and mother's tear", because "the Bethlehem babe" is only shade (unreal appearance - Webster).
I've never looked up "replete" before and am pleased to find that Webster has: filled to capacity, full, fully supplied or provided. Now isn't that a lovely thing to know for each new babe.
Further in the poem we read about the "gentle beam of living Love", surely another reference to light.
This continues in the article "What Christmas Means to Me," written for The Ladies' Home Journal (and found in The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, pages 261-263). Eddy tells us how she celebrates Christmas "with [her] soul" as "the dawn of divine Love breaking upon the gloom of matter and evil."
Her article ends on a note of caution that "Material gifts and pastimes tend to obliterate the spiritual idea in consciousness, leaving one alone and without His glory." Darkness - no illumination. That's something to ponder! Let us instead cherish and develop those qualities Eddy mentions earlier in her piece, viz.
- quietude - tranquility
- humility - modesty, unpretentiousness
- benevolence - kind, generous
- charity - love of fellow man, kindliness in judging others
- good will towards man - kindly feeling, willing effort
- eloquent silence - expressive forbearance from speech
- prayer - letting God's thoughts be our thoughts
- praise - all honour and glory to God
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