The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. Christmas as a Symbol of the Sun’s Triumph

[ 1 ] Let us try to reflect on how many people today are still able to evoke a clear, somewhat deeper sense within their souls as they walk through the streets and see the preparations for Christmas everywhere. Just how few clear ideas there are about this festival today, and how little they correspond to the intentions of those—we may speak this way as Theosophists—who once established these great festivals as symbols of the infinite and the imperishable in the world, can be amply demonstrated by glancing at the so-called Christmas reflections in our newspapers. There can surely be nothing more disheartening and, at the same time, more alien to the very essence of the matter than what is being disseminated to the world through the printed page at this time.

[ 2 ] Let us today allow a kind of summary to pass before our souls of what these various autumn lectures have brought us regarding the horizon of spiritual science. This should not be a pedantic, schoolmasterly summary, but rather the kind of summary that can well up in our hearts when we approach the Christmas festival from the spiritual scientific perspective—as it can present itself to us when we regard the spiritual scientific view of life not as a dry theory, not as an outward profession of faith, not as a philosophy, but as life itself pulsing directly through us. Modern man stands alien to immediate nature, far more alien than he realizes, far more alien than even in Goethe’s time. Or who still feels the full depth of that saying by Goethe, which the great poet uttered when he entered the circles of Weimar and, at the same time, began a phase of life that was of utmost importance to him? At that time, he addressed nature with its mysterious forces in a hymn, a kind of Goethean prayer:

[ 3 ] “Nature! We are surrounded and embraced by her—unable to step out of her, and unable to penetrate deeper into her. Uninvited and without warning, it draws us into the cycle of its dance and carries us along until we are weary and slip from its embrace.

[ 4 ] It is constantly creating new forms; what exists now has never existed before, and what has been will never return—everything is new, and yet always the same.

[ 5 ] We live right in the midst of it, yet we are strangers to it. It speaks to us ceaselessly, yet it does not reveal its secret to us. We constantly influence it, yet we have no power over it.

[ 6 ] She seems to have geared everything toward individuality, yet she pays no attention to the individuals themselves. She is always building and always destroying, and her workshop is inaccessible.

[ 7 ] She lives among nothing but children, and the mother—where is she? — She is the only artist: creating the greatest contrasts from the simplest material; achieving the greatest perfection without the slightest hint of effort—reaching the most precise clarity, always veiled in a touch of softness. Each of her works has its own essence, each of her creations its own distinct concept, and yet everything forms a single whole.

[ 8 ] She is putting on a show: we don't know if she realizes it herself, and yet she is performing it for us, who are standing in the corner.

[ 9 ] There is eternal life, becoming, and movement within her, and yet she does not move forward. She is in a state of perpetual transformation, and there is not a single moment of stillness within her. She has no concept of remaining still, and she has attached her curse to stillness. She is steadfast. Her pace is measured, her exceptions rare, her laws immutable ...”

[ 10 ] We are all her children. And even when we believe we are acting least in accordance with her laws, we may in fact be acting most in accordance with this great law that flows through nature and pours into us. And who still feels so deeply today that other significant saying of Goethe’s, with which Goethe sought no less to express empathy for the hidden forces common to nature and humanity—where Goethe addresses this nature not as a lifeless entity, as in today’s materialistic thinking, but as a living spirit:

Sublime Spirit, you gave me, gave me everything,
That I asked for. You did not in vain
Turn your face toward me in the fire.
You gave me the magnificent natural world as my kingdom,
The power to feel it, to enjoy it. You do not
do you merely allow me to be a cold, marveling visitor,
but grant me to gaze into its deep bosom
as into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the procession of the living
past me, and teach me to know my brothers
in the quiet thicket, in air and water.
And when the storm roars and creaks in the forest,
The giant spruce, crashing down, sweeps through
Neighboring branches and trunks, crushing them as it falls,
And the hill thunders with a dull, hollow roar at its fall,
Then you lead me to the safe cave, show
Me to myself, and within my own breast
Secret, profound wonders unfold.

[ 11 ] This is the mood through which Goethe, drawing on his sense of nature, sought once again to revive something that flowed from both feeling and insight. This is the mood of the times when wisdom itself still lived in harmony with nature, when those symbols of empathy with nature and the universe were created—symbols that we, from the perspective of spiritual science, recognize as the great festivals. Such a festival has become something abstract, almost indifferent, to the soul and the heart. For us today, the word—over which we can argue, to which we can swear—often matters more than what that word was originally intended to signify. This word—this external, literal word—was meant to be the representative, the proclamation, the symbol of the great, creative Word that lives in nature outside and throughout the entire universe, and that comes alive within us again when we truly recognize ourselves; it is meant to be brought to the consciousness of all humanity on those occasions that, according to the course of nature, are particularly suited for this purpose. That was the intention behind the establishment of the great festivals. Let us try to use our insight—that is, what we have strived to assimilate in the course of the spiritual science lectures—to understand what the ancient sages expressed through the Christmas festival.

[ 12 ] This Christmas is not merely a Christian holiday. It has existed wherever religious sentiment has found expression. If you look back at ancient Egypt, thousands upon thousands of years before our era, if you look over to Asia, or even if you look back to our own region, again many years before our era, everywhere you will find this same festival during the days when Christianity also celebrates the birth of Christ.

[ 13 ] What kind of festival was it that has been celebrated all over the world, since time immemorial, during these days? — Today we will focus on nothing other than those marvelous fire festivals that were observed in the regions of northern and central Europe in ancient times. It was during these days that this festival was primarily celebrated in our regions—in Scandinavia, Scotland, and England—within the circles of the ancient Celts by their priests, the so-called Druids. And what was being celebrated there?

[ 14 ] There, people celebrated the end of winter and the gradual return of spring. Of course, as we approach Christmas, we are still heading into winter. But in nature, a victory is already being heralded—one that for humankind can serve as the symbol of a festival of hope, or rather—if we use the word that exists for this festival in almost every language—the symbol of a festival of confidence, a festival of trust and faith. The victory of the sun over the opposing forces of nature: that is the symbol. We have felt them, the days growing shorter and shorter. And this shortening of the days is, for us, an expression of the dying off—or rather, the slumber—of the forces of nature until the day on which we celebrate Christmas and on which our ancestors observed the same festival. On this day, the days themselves begin to grow longer and longer. The light of the sun celebrates its victory over darkness. Today, with our materialistic way of thinking, this seems to us—far more than we realize—to be an event we no longer give much thought to. To those who possessed a vivid sense of feeling and a wisdom in harmony with that feeling, it appeared as a living expression of a spiritual experience—an experience of the divinity itself that guides our lives. Just as an important event takes place in an individual’s personal life that determines something, so too was such a solstice perceived in those days as something significant in the life of a higher being. Indeed, even more than that: people did not merely perceive this shortening and subsequent lengthening of the days as an expression of such a life event in a higher being, but rather as a reminder of something much greater, something unique. And this brings us to the great fundamental idea of Christmas as a world festival, a festival of humanity of the very highest order.

[ 15 ] In the times when there was a true esoteric teaching—not as today, when it is denied by the external materialistic worldview, but in the sense that it functioned as the lifeblood of all national life—in those times, people observed something happening in nature at Christmas, which was regarded as a milestone, as a reminder of a great event that once took place on this earth. And the priests, who gathered their most faithful followers—those who were the teachers of the people—around them at midnight during these days, sought to reveal a great mystery to their faithful and spoke to them something like the following. I am not telling you here anything contrived, nothing discovered through abstract science, but rather I am recounting something that was lived out in the mysteries, in secret places of worship, in those times I have alluded to, when the priests gathered their faithful to give them strength for their teachings through what they told them.

[ 16 ] Today, they said, we see the victory of the sun over darkness beginning to unfold. It was once like this on this Earth as well. Then the sun celebrated its great victory over darkness. This is how it happened: Up until then, all physical life on our Earth had flourished almost exclusively at the level of the animal kingdom. What existed on our Earth as the highest realm was only just beginning to prepare itself to receive the immortal human soul. Then, in those ancient times, a moment came—a great moment in human evolution—when the immortal, imperishable human soul descended from divine heights. By that time, the wave of life had developed to such an extent that the human body had become capable of receiving the imperishable soul within itself. This human ancestor did indeed stand higher than the materialistic natural scientists believe. But the spiritual part, the immortal part, was not yet within him. He first descended from another, higher planet to our Earth, which was now to become the stage for his activity, the abode of that which is now imperishable for us—our soul.

[ 17 ] We call these ancestors of humanity the Lemurian race. They were followed by the Atlantean race and then by our own, which we call the Aryan race. Within this Lemurian race, human bodies were impregnated by the higher human soul. Spiritual science refers to this great moment in human evolution as the “Descent of the Divine Sons of the Spirit.” Since that time, this human soul has been shaping and working within the human body toward its higher evolution. Contrary to what materialistic natural science assumes—today I can only hint at this; I have spoken about it at length in other lectures, and those who are here for the first time and might regard what I say as fantasy must take this into account—it was at this point in time that the human body was imbued with the immortal soul. Contrary to the view of materialist natural scientists, something happened in the vast universe at that time that ranks among the most important events in the development of humanity.

[ 18 ] At that time, little by little, that constellation began to take shape—that mutual alignment of the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun—which made the descent of the souls possible. At that time, the Sun took on for humankind the significance it has for their growth and flourishing on Earth, and at the same time, the significance it has for the other creatures that belong to them—for plants and animals. Only those who spiritually grasp the entire process of the development of humankind and the Earth will properly understand this connection between the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth and the people living on Earth. There was a time—so it was taught in those ancient days—when the Earth was still one with the Sun and the Moon. At that time, they were still a single body. The beings of that time also had a different form and appearance than those living on Earth today, for they were then adapted to that world body which consisted jointly of the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth. Everything that lives on this Earth received its essence through the fact that first the Sun and then the Moon separated, and that these two celestial bodies entered into an external relationship with our Earth. And in this relationship lies the very secret of the unity of the human spirit with the entire Universal Spirit—which spiritual science calls the Logos—and which encompasses the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth simultaneously. Within it we live, weave, and are.

[ 19 ] Just as the Earth was born from the body that encompassed both the Sun and the Moon, so too is the human being born from a spirit, from a soul to which the Sun, Earth, and Moon all belong. When a human being looks up at the sun, looks up at the moon, they should not merely see these outer physical bodies, but should see in them the outer bodies of spiritual beings. Today’s materialism, of course, has forgotten this. But whoever can no longer see the bodies of spirits in the sun and the moon cannot recognize the body of a spirit in the human body either. Just as the human body is the bearer of a spirit, so too are the heavenly bodies the bearers of spiritual beings.

[ 20 ] Human beings also belong to these spiritual beings. Just as the human body is separated from the forces that govern the sun and the moon, and just as the human body nevertheless harbors forces that are active in the sun and the moon, so too is the same spirituality that governs the sun and the moon active in the human soul. And by becoming this being on Earth, human beings have become dependent on that mode of action of the Sun into which it has entered as a special body illuminating the Earth.

[ 21 ] Thus our ancestors felt themselves to be spiritual children of the entire universe, and they said to themselves: Through what the Sun Spirit has brought forth within us—our spiritual form—we have become human beings. For us, the Sun’s victory over darkness also serves as a reminder of the victory our soul achieved back then, in the times when the Sun first shone as it now shines upon the Earth. It was a victory of the Sun when, long ago, the immortal soul entered the physical body under the sign of the Sun, sinking into the darkness of desires, instincts, and passions.

[ 22 ] Let us imagine the life of the spirit for a moment. Darkness precedes the triumph of the sun. And this darkness followed only an earlier era of sunlight. So it was also with the human soul. This human soul emerges from the original divinity. But it had to sink into unconsciousness for a time in order to build up the lower human nature within that unconsciousness; for this human soul itself gradually built up the lower human nature in order to then inhabit this dwelling it had built for itself. If you imagine a master builder constructing a dwelling to the best of his ability and later moving into it, you have an apt analogy for the entry of the immortal human soul into the human body. But at that time, the human soul could work on its own dwelling only unconsciously. This unconscious work is expressed in the parable by darkness. And the awakening, the dawning of the conscious human soul, is expressed in the parable by the victory of the sun.

[ 23 ] For those who still had a vivid sense of humanity’s connection to the universe, this triumph of the sun marked the moment when they received what was most important for their earthly existence. That great moment was commemorated in that celebration.

[ 24 ] Throughout the ages, people have imagined the human journey through the earthly realm as one in which the human being becomes more and more like the regular, rhythmic course of nature itself. If we look up from the human soul to that in which its life is now encompassed—if we look up to the course of the sun in the universe and to everything connected with this course of the sun—then something becomes clear to us that is infinitely important to feel and perceive: the great rhythmic, the great harmonious, in contrast to the chaotic and the disharmonious in human nature itself. Look up at the sun, follow its path, and you will see how rhythmically, how regularly its phenomena recur throughout the course of the year and the course of the day. And you will see how regularly and rhythmically everything is interconnected under the sun’s course in what we call nature.

[ 25 ] I have often emphasized that everything is rhythmic among the beings that are lower than humans. Imagine for a moment that the sun were to stray from its orbit—for just a fraction of a second—and picture the incredible, indescribable chaos that would be unleashed in our universe. It is only through this great, mighty harmony in the sun’s course that our universe is possible. The rhythmic life processes of all beings that depend on the sun are linked to this harmony. Imagine the sun’s annual cycle, how it brings forth the creatures of nature in spring; imagine how little you can conceive of the violet blooming at any time other than the one to which you are accustomed. Imagine if seeds were sown at a different time and the harvest took place at a different time than it actually does. All the way up to the animal kingdom, you will see that everything is dependent on the rhythmic course of the sun. Even in humans, everything is rhythmic, regular, and harmonious—insofar as it is not subject to human passions, instincts, or even the human mind. Observe your pulse and the course of digestion; marvel at the great rhythm and feel the vast, infinite wisdom that flows through all of nature; and then compare this with the irregularity and chaos that reign in human passions, drives, and desires—and especially in the human mind and thought. Try letting the regularity of your pulse and your breath pass before your mind’s eye, and compare it with the irregularity of thinking, feeling, and willing. It is a flickering like a will-o’-the-wisp.

[ 26 ] Imagine, by contrast, how wisely the forces of life are ordered, how rhythm must prevail over chaos. What damage do human passion and hedonism wreak upon the rhythm of the human body! I have often mentioned here how wonderful it is for those who, through the science of anatomy, come to know the heart—this marvelously designed organ of the human body—and must then realize what it has to endure when humans interfere with the heart’s rhythmic, harmonious beat through the consumption of tea, coffee, and so on. So it is with the entire rhythmic, divine, and wise nature that was admired by our ancestors, whose very soul is the sun with its regular course.

[ 27 ] As the sages and their followers looked up at the sun, they said to themselves: You are the image of what this soul, born with you, is not yet, but what it is meant to become. — The divine order of the universe revealed itself to these sages in all its glory. This is also expressed by the Christian worldview when it declares that glory is to be found in the divine heights. The word “glory” means revelation, not honor. One should not say, “Glory to God in the highest”—but rather, “Today is the revelation of God in the heavens.”—This reveals the truth of the statement. And in this sentence one can fully sense the glory that floods the world. In earlier times, people perceived this in such a way that they held up this cosmic harmony as a great ideal for the one who was to be the leader of the rest of humanity. That is why, at all times and everywhere where there was an awareness of these things, people spoke of the “Sun Hero.”

[ 28 ] In the temple sites where the initiation was performed, seven degrees of initiation were distinguished. I will present them to you using their Persian names. The first degree is that in which a person transcended everyday feelings, then attained a higher spiritual perception and the knowledge of the spirit. Such a person was called a “raven.” Therefore, the ravens are those who announce to the initiates in the temples what is happening out in the world. When medieval wisdom literature sought to portray, in the person of a medieval ruler, an initiate who was to wait within the Earth, among the Earth’s treasures of wisdom, for that great moment when Christianity, renewed and deepened, would rejuvenate humanity—when this medieval wisdom literature shaped the figure of Barbarossa— it once again had the ravens serve as the heralds. Even the Old Testament speaks of the ravens in connection with Elijah.

[ 29 ] Those initiated into the second degree are the “Occultists”; those into the third degree are the “Warriors”; and those into the fourth degree are the “Lions.” Those in the fifth degree are designated by the name of their own people—Persians, Indians, and so on—for only the initiate of the fifth degree is the true representative of his people. The initiate of the sixth degree was called the “Sun Hero” or “Sun Runner.” The initiate of the seventh degree bore the name “Father.”

[ 30 ] Why, then, was the initiate of the sixth degree called the “Sun Hero”? Anyone who had ascended so high on the ladder of spiritual knowledge must have developed within himself a life that unfolded throughout the entire universe in accordance with the pattern of the divine rhythm. He had to perceive, feel, and think in such a way that nothing chaotic, nothing unrhythmic, nothing disharmonious remained within him, but rather that he was filled with an inner harmony of the soul that resonated with the outer harmony of the sun. That was the requirement placed upon those initiated into the sixth degree. They were held up as holy beings, as models, as ideals, and it was said of them: Just as great a misfortune as it would be for the universe if the sun were to stray from its orbit for even a quarter of a minute would be the misfortune if a solar hero were to deviate, even for a single moment, from the path of great morality, from the path of the soul’s rhythm, or from spiritual harmony. — Anyone who had found in his spirit a path as certain as that of the sun out there in the universe was called a solar hero. And all peoples had such solar heroes.

[ 31 ] Our scholars know so little about these things. It does strike them that solar myths crystallized around the lives of all the great founders of religions. But they do not realize that, during initiation ceremonies, leading heroes were often transformed into solar heroes, and that it is therefore not at all surprising when what the ancients sought to imbue into these stories is subsequently rediscovered by materialistic research. Such solar myths have been sought and found in the cases of Buddha and even Christ. Here you have the reason why they could be found in them. They were first imbued with these myths, so that they represented a direct reflection of the solar rhythm. These solar heroes then served as the great model to be emulated.

[ 32 ] What did people imagine was going on in the soul of such a hero, who had found such inner harmony? — It was imagined that no longer did a single, individual human soul dwell within him, but rather that something of the universal soul—which permeates the entire universe—had been absorbed into him. This universal soul, which permeates the entire universe, was called Chrestòs in Greece, and is known among the most exalted sages of the East as the Buddhi. When a person has ceased to feel merely as the bearer of his individual soul and experiences within himself something of the Universal, then he has created within himself an image of that which once united with the human body as the Solar Soul; then he has achieved something of immense significance on the path of humanity.

[ 33 ] If we consider this person with such a refined soul, then we will be able to envision the future of the human race and the entire relationship between that future and the idea, the concept of humanity itself. As humanity stands before us today, one cannot imagine it any other way than that certain matters are decided by people—through conflict and strife, so to speak—by means of a kind of majority, through a majority decision. Where such majority decisions are still regarded as something truly ideal, there one has not yet grasped what truth really is. Where does true truth actually live within us? Truth lives within us when we set out to think logically. Or would it not be nonsense to decide by majority vote whether two times two equals four or three times four equals twelve? Once a person has recognized what is true, even if millions were to come and say it is otherwise, he will still have his certainty within himself.

[ 34 ] This is how far we have come in terms of scientific thinking—that is, thinking that is no longer influenced by human passions, drives, and instincts. Wherever passions, drives, and instincts are at work, people still find themselves in strife and discord, in a confused jumble—just as the life of drives and instincts in general constitutes a wild chaos. But once the drives, instincts, and passions have been purified, pure and ideal—becoming what is called Buddhi or Chrestos—and when they have been developed to the level at which logical, dispassionate thinking stands today, then what shines before us in the ancient wisdom religions, in Christianity, and in anthroposophical spiritual science as the true ideal of humanity will have been attained. When our thinking and feeling are so purified that what one person feels resonates harmoniously with what others feel; when the same epoch has dawned on this human earth for feeling and sensation as has dawned for the unifying intellect; when Buddhi, Chrestos, is embodied in the human race, then the ideal of the ancient wisdom teachers, of Christianity, and of anthroposophy will be fulfilled. Then there will be no more need to reach a consensus on what one considers good, noble, and right, just as there is no need to reach a consensus on what one has recognized as logically correct or logically false. Everyone can set this ideal before their soul, and when they do so, they will have before them the ideal of the Solar Hero—the very same ideal held by all secret teachers who have been initiated into the sixth degree.

[ 35 ] Even our German mystics in the Middle Ages sensed this when they used a word with a profound meaning: “Vergottung” or “Vergöttlichung.” This concept existed in all wisdom religions. What does this mean? It means the following: Once upon a time, those whom we today regard as the spirits of the universe also passed through a stage at which humanity stands today—the chaotic stage. And these leading spirits of the universe fought their way up to their divine level, where their expressions of life resonate harmoniously throughout the cosmos. What appears to us today as the harmonious course of the sun throughout the year, in the growth of plants, and in the lives of animals, was once chaotic and only gradually evolved into this great harmony. Where these spirits once stood, humanity stands today. Humanity will evolve from its chaos toward a future harmony that will mirror today’s sun, today’s universal harmony.

[ 36 ] This—not as a theory, not as a doctrine, but as a living feeling instilled in our soul—is what the anthroposophical Christmas feeling offers. If we truly feel that the glory—the revelation of divine harmony—appears in the heights of heaven, and if we know that the revelation of this harmony will one day resound from our own souls, then we will feel the other thing that will come about within humanity through this harmony; then we will feel the peace of those who are of good will. Thus, these two feelings are linked as Christmas sentiments. When we look, from this grand perspective, into the divine order of the worlds, into the revelation, into its glory in the heights of heaven, and look out toward the future of humanity, we can already sense today that harmony which will take hold on Earth in the future among those who have the feeling and sensibility for it. The more what we perceive as harmony in the world outside sinks into our inner being, the more peace and harmony there will be on this earth.

[ 37 ] Thus, the great ideal of peace presents itself to our soul as a sense of nature of the highest order when, during the Christmas season, we truly feel and sense the course of the sun in nature. When we sense the victory of sunlight over darkness during these days, we draw from it the great confidence, the great trust that connects our own evolving soul to this cosmic harmony; then we will not in vain allow that which lives within this cosmic harmony to flow into our soul. Then something harmonious will flow through us and live within us; then the seed that brings peace to this earth—in the sense of peace among religions—will take root in our souls. Those who feel such peace—the kind of peace that will come over the earth once that higher level of harmony is attained for feeling and the spirit, a level that today is attained only by the uniform, rational mind—are people of good will. Then, in place of strife and discord, there will be all-pervading love—the love of which Goethe says in the same hymn I quoted that a few sips from this cup of love will compensate us for a life full of toil.

[ 38 ] That is why this Christmas has been a celebration of optimism, a celebration of trust and hope in all religions of wisdom, because during these days we feel that light must prevail. The seed, planted in the earth, will sprout something from within itself that seeks the light and must flourish again in the light of the new year. Just as the seed of the plant is lowered into the earth and matures in the light of the sun, so too is the divine truth—the divine and true soul—lowered into the depths of the life of passion and instinct. There, down in the darkness, the divine solar soul is to mature. And just as surely as the seed matures in the earth, and just as surely as this maturation is made possible for the seed in the earth through the victory of light over darkness, so surely is the victory of the soul’s light made possible through the ongoing victory of light over the darkness of the soul. And just as there can be only strife in darkness and only peace in light, so too will world harmony and world peace come about through right understanding. This is the profound, true message of Christianity as well: Glory in these days, the revelation in these days of the divine powers on high, in the heavens, and peace to people of good will.

[ 39 ] Based on this broad worldview, the Christian Church decided in the 4th century to move the feast of the Savior’s birth to the same days on which all the great wisdom religions celebrated the victory of light over darkness. Until the 4th century, the date of Christmas—the feast of Christ’s birth—was completely variable. It was not until the 4th century that it was decided to have the Christian Savior born on the day on which this victory of light over darkness had always been celebrated.

[ 40 ] We cannot address the wisdom teachings of Christianity themselves today; they will be the subject of a lecture next year. But one thing should and must be said today: nothing could have been more fitting than to place the celebration of the birth of that divine individuality in this era, which offers Christians the assurance and confidence that their soul—their divinity—will triumph over all that is darkness in their purely external world.

[ 41 ] Thus, Christianity is in harmony with all the great world religions. And when the Christian Christmas bells ring out, people may well recall that in days past this festival was celebrated throughout the world. It was celebrated wherever people understood the true, great progress of the human soul on this earth, wherever they knew something of what the spirit and spiritual life mean, and wherever they sought to practice self-knowledge in a practical sense.

[ 42 ] What we have been discussing today is not some vague or abstract sense of nature, but a sense of nature imbued with living spirituality. When we take up Goethe’s words: “Nature, we are surrounded and embraced by her,” and so on, we must be clear that we do not interpret nature in a materialistic sense, but rather that we see in her the outward expression and physiognomy of the divine world spirit. And just as the physical is born from the physical, and the soulful and spiritual from the divine-soulful and divine-spiritual, and just as the physical, the bodily, connects with purely material forces, so too does the soulful connect with the spiritual.

[ 43 ] To sense and feel this in connection with the entire universe, to use our knowledge and our thinking to feel at one with the entire universe—not in an indefinite way, but in the most definite way possible—this is the purpose of the great festivals as landmarks for humanity. And when we begin to feel this once again, these festivals will be something different from what they are today; they will take root anew in our souls and hearts, and they will become what they are truly meant to be: pivotal points in the year that connect us to the spirit of the cosmos.

[ 44 ] When we have fulfilled our duties and the tasks of daily life throughout the year, at these times of the year we look toward what connects us to the Eternal. And even though we know that we’ve had to struggle for many things over the course of the year—on these days we get a sense that, above all struggle and above all chaos, there is peace and harmony. That is why these festivals are festivals of great ideals; and Christmas is the celebration of the birth of humanity’s greatest ideal—the ideal that humanity must achieve if it is to fulfill its destiny at all. The celebration of the birth of what a human being can perceive, feel, and will—that is Christmas, when it is truly understood,

[ 45 ] Anthroposophical spiritual science aims to help ensure that this festival is once again understood in this way. We do not wish to send out into the world a dogma, a mere doctrine, or a philosophy, but rather life itself. This is our ideal: that everything we say and teach—everything contained in our writings and in our science—may become part of life. It will flow into life when people practice spiritual science everywhere, even in their daily lives, so that we no longer need to speak of spiritual science—when spiritual scientific life resounds from every pulpit through the words spoken to the faithful, without the words “theosophy” or “spiritual science” ever being uttered. When, in all courts of law, people’s actions are viewed with a spiritual-scientific sensibility; when, at the sickbed, the physician thinks and heals from a spiritual-scientific perspective; when, in schools, the teacher cultivates spiritual science for the growing child; when, on every street, people think, feel, and act in accordance with spiritual science—so that the teaching of spiritual science has become superfluous — then our ideal will have been achieved, and spiritual science will be a part of everyday life. But then spiritual science will also be present at the great festive turning points of the year. And through spiritual scientific thinking, feeling, and willing, human beings will connect their everyday lives to the spiritual. In this way, on the other hand, they will allow the eternal and imperishable—the sun of the spirit—to shine into their souls on the great feast days, which will remind them that within them there is a true, higher self—something divine, sun-like, and radiant—that will always triumph over all darkness and all chaos, bringing a peace of soul that will always act as a balancing force against all struggle, all war, and all strife in the world.