p. 16 | Christmas Numbers by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 24, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 51.

Christmas Numbers

By Editor

Christmas Numbers.—Most of the great papers nowadays, including the dailies, issue “Christmas numbers,” and many of them indeed are “things of beauty,” and compensate in a measure, in appearance at least, for other issues. We have no criticism to offer against the magnifying of the gift of the Christ-child to the world. We praise God for it; and yet the Gift is not a gift of a day nor for a day; nor is it God's design that a single day should be kept in memory of that event. The Gift of God is both infinite in value and eternal in duration, and it calls for responsive gratitude from man, its recipient, gratitude in both word and deed,—at all times and seasons. To celebrate merely a day, when God has not commanded it, tends to exalt the institution and hide the great fact. Let the birth of Jesus and the fact that he identified himself as one of us be kept in mind at all times, and let it move us to show our gratitude to him by ministering to others. The beautiful poem by Mrs. Hemans on another page is suggestive of the spirit which remembrance of the events of the birth of Jesus should bring to our mind—a light to guide alway till we meet him again.