Why Celebrate Christmas?

Paramhansa Yogananda

Is it right to use the birth of Christ for material rejoicings involved in decorations, Christmas dinners and the exchange of gifts, or is it right to worship the coming of Christ only in Spirit?

Christ is only suggested in social Christmas festivities, but He is seen and felt as an everlasting, ever-joyous fact in the cradle of divine ecstasy. Unless you make the effort to really get acquainted with the ever-living Christ, born as new wisdom and new happiness within you, I am afraid you will let the precious instructive Christmas season pass by without heed.

I am not telling you to omit the social festivities. What I want is that you not omit the paramount spiritual factor in your Christmas celebration. Add to your social celebration of Christmas the celebration of bringing Christ a second time in your meditative consciousness. Prepare yourself to celebrate Christmas in the real way:

1. Make your heart an altar of Christ-love. Love all races as the uniform dwelling place of the omnipresent Christ.
2. Forgive all your imaginary and real enemies even as Christ forgave His adversaries.
3. Govern all the actions of your life with the honesty and fearlessness of Jesus Christ.
4. Behold the omnipresent joy of Christ in all men, in all saints, in all creatures, in the star-peopled cosmos, and in the temple of your own thoughts.
5. Exchange spiritual gifts by giving your good qualities to those who need them and by receiving the soul-qualities of those who are great and who love you for your own good.
6. Exchange gifts with the thought of giving Christ the gift of your heart and receiving the gift of Himself in the cradle of your calm consciousness.
7. Make the unknown Christ known within yourself by seeing Him born a second time as the ever-new, ever-increasing joy of your daily deep meditation.

Oriental Christ
from East-West Magazine, 1930

Jesus was an Oriental, by birth and blood and training. The Wise Men of the East, or East India, came to confer about Him when He was born, knowing Him to be one of the greatest message-bearers of Truth.

In the Unknown Life of Christ, by Nicholas Notovitch, the Russian author tells how he went to Tibet and from sacred scrolls in a monastery secured conclusive evidence that Jesus conferred with the Masters on Yoga and great problems of human upliftment, living with them at the Monastery; until the age age of fifteen.

The sacred scrolls further revealed that as Jesus Christ was visited by the Wise Men of the East, so He paid them a return visit to Tibet and conferred with the Great Masters. Jesus then went to India to confer with the Masters there; and after preaching the Message in India, he went to Asia Minor to spread His message.