The symbols of Christmas give us joy and its holiday spirit gives us inspiration. But the very word “holiday” means Holy Day, and we who are seeking to live rightly and lovingly find it a time to recapture the inner vision of the Christ-like person that indwells us all. Through the busy year, we have often been like Herod, believing that material power and possessions are alone our security. Like Herod, we have sought to kill the spiritual impulses within us. We have slain our first-born ideas that would have made us greater and kinder people. We have rested in the comforts of our material security and allowed other individuals to become wise as they sought the Truth of themselves.

Our minds have been like the inn at Bethlehem, filled to overflowing with intellectual convictions, until there has been no room for the thoughts of healing and peace. We have been so busy with the affairs of this world that we have failed to perceive that at the backdoor of our minds, the Christ was waiting for us to behold him as he really is. We have feasted on our wisdom of things, but we have not satisfied our inner hunger for the Kingdom of Good. But always the Christ Child waits within us. Whenever we wish to turn within and visit our own true Selves, the Christ awaits us with eternal patience.

The inner hunger for righteousness persists. It gnaws at our hearts and troubles our consciousness. We know intuitively that there are inner gifts that must be made, and we shall not find peace until we have released these unto the Christ within. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh would be easy to give for they can be purchased of men, but the pure consciousness of our indwelling God cannot receive these. Integrity, love, and right thinking are the only gifts acceptable to the Christ. These are the nourishment needed by the inner Self in order to increase Its area of activity in our lives. So, at Christmas, we should turn within and be like those Wise Men, and do this real giving of ourselves, which is not easy, but which guarantees so much that is true and good.

Once this inner experience of true prayer and baptism has taken place, we join with the other Wise Men and go home by another way. The old path has lost its value. It now appears as the hard way because it is the false way. We cannot go back to Herod, to our former concepts of material values, but with a renewed mind and an expanded heart, we return to the business of living by the new pathway of the soul, beholding God incarnated within ourselves. Never again will the old road of self-seeking ensnare us. We have been born again, and this time we see the Infinite Presence, and know it from a center within.

Let us read the second chapter of Matthew in the quietness of Christmas Day, and join with those unnamed men who found the indwelling God. The Star of Bethlehem is in the high consciousness of each of us. It bids us follow the inner pathway through the wilderness of wrong beliefs to that simple, quiet place within where Christ awaits us. Here alone is wisdom, for here the Infinite Mind thinks and the Infinite Love heals. We shall join hands this Holy Day with the Wise Men of old and follow the Star of our own Christ Selves. “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light” (Isaiah 9:2).

Originally published in Science of Mind magazine December, 1948.