The ringing of Christmas bells all over the world is thus in the absolute sense a vibrating echo of the eternal voice of this host of angels. It is therefore only ignorant, unloving and naive people who can afford to ignore the sound of the Christmas bells today and so turn off the light of life and inevitably wander in the darkness. But, for the developed and loving human being who can hear the angel's or the great world-redeemers' voice and sounds in the mighty clanging, there open even greater and greater sources of light or perspectives – Christmas's revelation of the divine radiance. Where the angel's song sweeps over the Earth, darkness cannot completely close over people. We see also the dark working-days of mid-winter becoming lit up by the joy-engendering phenomena of Christmas which culminate in Christmas Eve's lit-up Christmas tree and its accompanying great or small mountains of presents exchanged between family, friends and acquaintances. What is it we see here? It is just a fabrication, a pretext engineered by the business world to make people buy goods like so many other much-advertised innovations whose only purpose is to entice people to spend money? Yes, the spiritless, materialistically minded person feels that this is how it is.

Imagine what a poor, empty, joyless notion such a person has of the divine flood of light of Christmas! It is true that Christmas has become a highly important, indeed economically an almost indispensible, source of income in the budget of many businesses, but it is foolish to believe that this is the true cause of the manifestation and the joy-promoting and present-giving tendencies of Christmas. Just as there is from the dark night-side of every globe a view out to the stars, the suns and the milky ways (not to mention the direct moonlight which also exists as an illuminative element in the darkness of the night), so there is no kind of mental darkness in which there is not normally a view out to the heavenly light. Just as there can be clouds obscuring the moon or stars, so there can also be mental clouds which block the view to the light sky of the spirit and the stars, suns and milky ways appearing in it. Such dark clouds are all materialism and atheism. All egoistic thoughts and manifestations or everything which is a contrast to neighbourly love is thus a spiritual solar eclipse, spiritual cloudy weather or spiritual cloud cover. Where this cloud cover is promoted, cultivated and produced in excessive quantities it hides the heavenly light. And there, where one is unable to perceive the heavenly light, one cannot experience this heavenly light as the source of Christmas's joyous light-filled atmosphere and mood. But by the spiritually developed human being in whom there already exists much supernatural light, Christmas's heavenly light is felt to a greater or lesser extent. He sees that this whole immeasurable mass of energy, in the form of the desire to give presents and to send loving greetings, is absolutely not a mere display of tradition, even if perhaps a percentage of it can be reckoned as such. A great percentage of it is really something flowing out from people's hearts in a true desire to help in need, to create joy, even if this desire is only present during the days of Christmas.

That this stimulus to love is something rooted in or drawing its power from Christmas becomes obvious from the fact that many people when Christmas is over fall back on their old egoistic routines. The desire to make people happy and to help is so clearly reduced to the level typical of the normal character and moral standard of the people in question.

And what does the Christmas tree not represent? Is it not the very symbol of the structure of the universe, of the Godhead and the sons of God? Are not its great traditional star at the top and its lights symbols of the eternal Father, the crowning figure of the universe, the highest I and so the highest creator of the universe? What should all the other lights on the tree otherwise mean? Can they mean anything other than the very living beings of the universe, the creating and experiencing life, the living beings or the sons of God? And what is the meaning of all the gold and tinsel which swathe and decorate the tree and the piled up presents and parcels? Do they not symbolize the material which God, through the living beings, transforms into radiant, golden phenomena in the form of the experiences of life? Will life ever be able to become perfect and worthy of the perfect human being before it has become a manifestation of the principle "Rather give than receive"? As long as people force the opposite principle "Rather take than give", upon other people, the Kingdom of Heaven cannot be experienced on Earth. Only Hell itself can blossom where one takes rather than gives. As terrestrial mankind's normal life is to such a great extent still based on the animal principle "Rather take than give", it is easy to see that it is this dark mental principle's atmosphere which the psychic atmosphere of Christmas lifts a little precisely during the darkness of midwinter.

It is this psychic atmosphere, this light and happy mood of Christmas which is the principle of world-redemption. It is not one of people's contrived traditions. Christmas is light amplified in every mental darkness. Christmas is God's radiant closeness in every place where there is a mental darkness, where there are unhappy beings, where there is mental night. In their physical manifestations the traditions of Christmas can of course be exaggerated and lead on to utter gluttony and excess. But it is not by these deviations that one should judge Christmas. It is by all the phenomena which show genuine desire and joy in creating help, light and happiness for all those who live in need, unhappiness, sorrow and suffering. This is the true light of Christmas, and this light is the only way to world peace, to the great birth, to the experience of immortality, to the experience of life outside time and space, to the experience of oneself as one with the Father, one with the Way, the Truth and the Life.