Christmas is generally known as the festival of the nativity of Christ. It is regarded as the Birthday of Jesus, the teacher recognized by Christendom. Though generally known as a Christian festival, it is not exclusively so; it was already observed by the entire pagan world long before the era of Jesus. It is quite clear from historical and documentary evidence that before the fifth century there was no agreement as to the actual date of Christ's birth, and till then the calendars do not speak of it.

In the religious history and the mythology of many peoples we become familiar with numerous Sun-Gods who are all born at the time of the winter solstice, round about the 21st of December. Thus the Romans were celebrating the Rite of Mithra which they had adopted from Persia, and the birth of Mithra, the Sun-God, was celebrated on the 25th of December. Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire says:

The Roman Christians, ignorant of the real date of Christ's birth, fixed the solemn festival on the 25th of December, the Brumalia, or Winter Solstice, when the Pagans annually celebrated the Birth of Sol.

From Central America where civilization flourished in far distant times we have the examples of Mexican, Aztec and Yucatan Gods, all born of Virgin mothers and all born round about the 25th of December. The Venerable Bede, who lived in the eighth century, says of ancient Britons:

The ancient people of the Angli began the year on the 25th December when we now celebrate the Birthday of the Lord; and the very night which is now so holy to us, they called in their tongue "modranecht," that is, the mother's night, by reason we suspect of the ceremonies which in that night-long vigil they performed.

The Christmas festival is the drama, the representation of a divine and mysterious event—the Birth of Christos, the Avatara. It is a drama that the early Christians borrowed from the Pagans, and it is good that they so borrowed it; but unformately its real significance is not understood by the masses of Christendom today, nor is it explained to them. Jesus was not born on this day; the early Christians incorporated in their religion this festival, feeling the need for it in a moral and spiritual way.

Christmas is the festival of birth—the Birth of Divinity, of Christos, of Avalokiteshwara, of Krishna. In the process of human evolution, in accordance with the great Law of Cycles, cosmically, Divinity manifests through special Incarnations, and, psychologically, in special ways. The doctrine of Avataras or Divine Incarnations has two phases or aspects: one cosmical, the second psychological. There are appearances of great cosmic Avataras; they are macrocosmic phenomena. Secondly, in our own individual human unfoldment there are appearances, the afflatus of our own Divinity, our own spiritual Atma, and such are microcosmic phenomena. Nothing takes place in Nature that does not also occur in the human kingdom; and the appearance of Great Avataras has its counterpart in the life of men and women. The Great Birth, the Supreme Birth, is that very rare phenonemon in Nature when in a human individual, evolving onwards and upwards, the Great Purusha, Uttama-Purusha, enters and manifests Himself. Evolution in the human kingdom is a long process; yuga after yuga, man struggles; he sins and suffers and grows as he attempts to gain virtue and abandon vice; after many lives he frees himself from the enslavement of Nature, Prakriti; he becomes pure, Suddha, and then he develops higher spiritual powers or siddhis, and becomes fit to hold in the casket of his heart the living Image of Uttama-Purusha, the Supreme Man, call Him Krishna or call Him Christ, call Him Mithra or call Him Osiris, call him Odin or call Him Apollo. This is the Great Mystery, the advent of the Divine Man into the Living Temple of the Human Heart. It is to this secret and sacred Mystery that the Gita refers when it says that "among thousands of mortals a single one perhaps strives for perfection and among those so striving perhaps a single one knows me as I am." This rare Being is described in the same chapter as the "Mahatma difficult to find."

Coming to the psychological aspect: Each one of us has a dual nature; it is not merely the duality of lower and higher or evil and good; it is the duality of two distinct lines or pedigrees which mix and mingle in man. In part of our nature each one of us is a lunar being—a Chandra Vamshi; in another part of our being we are solar—Surya Vamshi.

The Moon has one very striking characteristic: it changes in its phases every hour, every day. From crescent to half, from half to gibbous, from gibbous to full, then waning from full it becomes new and invisible for a day or so. This is a good representation of our personal nature—ever changing.

Look at the Sun: it is ever full, rises and sets every day in the glory of fullness. This is our higher nature—the spiritual Individuality.

When the lunar or personal nature comes under the control and guidance of the solar or spiritual, it becomes full of radiance and light. We must make an effort to be born as the full moon, to live as the full moon and to die as the full moon. That is the message of the Buddha Festival. It is said that He was born at full moon. He attained Nirvana at full moon, He passed away when the moon was full.

Our practical question now is how we shall increase, how we shall enhance the power of the Solar Pedigree in us so that here on earth we may shine like the moon when it is full. The Voice of the Silence says: "Destroy thy lunar body," that is, the kama-rupa, and "cleanse thy mind-body," that is, the manasa-rupa. These two forms of life have to be dealt with—the destruction of kama, passion; the cleansing of manas, mind. These two processes are simultaneous, must go together; mind cleansing produces the death of kama. The final death of the lower passions brings to birth the Higher Man. Living as desire entities, we are familiar with the phenomenon of death. We say we are born to die. Every child who is born is sure only of one thing—that it is going to die.

The festival of Christmas brings to human attention the miracle of Birth. Why not so live that life is a perpetual creation, a series of births? It is rightly said that death disappoints the Soul; then why not take precautions against the snare of death? We die perpetually, continuously, because of delusion, moha, born of ignorance, avidya. The Birth of the Soul if perpetually brought about by kriya-shakti, creative activity, would take human beings not from death to death, but from one birth or awakening to another birth and awakening. Let us attempt always to awaken to new realities. The process of ever being born takes place because Atma, the Superior Luminous Self, has begun to create within the purified heart. That Superior Self is Krishna or Christos, the Uttama-Purusha, the Divine Man, and His Birth is the real celebration of Christmas.

We gain infinitely more than we lose in abandoning belief in the reality of divine Revelation. Whilst we retain, pure and unimpaired, the treasure of Christian morality, we relinquish nothing but the debasing elements added to it by human superstition. We are no longer bound to believe a theology which outrages reason and moral sense. We are freed from base anthropomorphic views of God and His government of the Universe, and from Jewish Mythology we rise to higher conceptions of an infinitely wise and beneficent Being, hidden from our finite minds, it is true, in the impenetrable glory of Divinity, but whose laws of wondrous comprehensiveness and perfection we ever perceive in operation around us....The argument so often employed by theologians, that Divine revelation is necessary for man, and that certain views contained in that revelation are required for our moral consciousness, is purely imaginary, and derived from the revelation which it seeks to maintain. The only thing absolutely necessary for man is TRUTH, and to that, and that alone, must our moral consciousness adapt itself.

—Walter R. Cassells: Supernatural Religion