Episode 9: The Christmas Festival and Its Spiritual Significance, a lecture by Rudolph Steiner

Dear unknown friend, today we will present a lecture by the famous mystic, clairvoyant, and founder of Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner, on the Christmas Festival and its meaning. Please enjoy the episode!

Magus Incognito reads: The Festival of Christmas which we shall soon be celebrating acquires new life when a deeper, more spiritual conception of the world is brought to bear upon it. In a spiritual sense the Christmas Festival is a Festival of the Sun, and as such we shall think of it to- day. To begin with, let us listen to the beautiful apostrophe to the sun which Goethe puts into the mouth of Faust: “Life’s pulses newly-quickened now awaken, Softly to greet the ethereal twilight leaping; Thou Earth through this night too hast stood unshaken, And at my feet fresh breathest from thy sleeping...
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Goethe lets these words be spoken by Faust, the representative of humanity, as he gazes at the radiant morning sun. But the Festival of which we are now to speak has to do with a Sun belonging to a far deeper realm of being than the sun which rises anew every morning. And it is this deeper Sun that will be the guiding moth in our thoughts to- day.

And now we will listen to words in which the deepest import of the Christmas Mystery is mirrored. In all ages these words resounded in the ears of those who were pupils of the Mysteries—before they were allowed to participate in the Mysteries themselves: “Behold the Sun At tire midnight hour; Build with stones in the lifeless ground, Thus in decay and in the night of Death Find the Creation's new beginning, Young morning's strength; Glory in the heights the eternal Word of Gods; Shelter in the depths the Powers of Peace. In darkness dwelling, create a Sun. In matter weaving, know the joy of Spirit!”

Many to whom the Christmas Tree with its candles is a familiar sight to-day, believe that it is a very ancient institution—but this is not the case.
The Christmas Tree is a very recent European custom, dating no further back than about a hundred years or so.

Although, however, the Christmas Tree is a recent custom, the Christmas Festival is very ancient. It was celebrated in the earliest Mysteries of all religions, not as a festival of the outer sun but as one which awakens in men an inkling of the very wellsprings of existence. It was celebrated every year by the highest Initiates in the Mysteries, at the time of the year when the sun sends least power to the earth, bestows least warmth. But it was also celebrated by those who might not yet participate in the whole festival, who might witness only the outer, pictorial expression of the highest Mysteries. This imagery has been preserved through the ages, varying in form according to the several creeds.

The Christmas Festival is the Festival of the Holy Night, celebrated in the Mysteries by those who were ready for the awakening of the higher Self within them, or, as we should say in our time, those who have brought the Christ to birth within them. Only those who have no inkling of the fact that as well as the chemical and physical forces, spiritual forces are also at work and that the workings of both kinds of forces take effect at definite times and seasons in cosmic life, can imagine that the moment of the awakening of the higher Self in man is of no importance.
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