The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. The Significance of the Christian Festival from a Spiritual Scientific Perspective

[ 1 ] For many people today, Christmas means nothing more than lighting the Christmas tree. Yet this Christmas tree is the most recent symbol of the holiday. Even in the regions where it first appeared, it has been known for only about a hundred years. It is not, as many believe, an ancient pagan tradition. As new as the Christmas tree is, so old—so ancient—is the great human festival that now lies before us. For as long as people on earth have felt a sense of humanity, sensed and known what leads beyond humanity toward the divinity of the God-man—what elevates human beings above themselves—for that long this sublime Christmas celebration has been known. In the Gospel of John there is a saying that can serve as a guiding principle for the idea of Christmas: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” Here we find a hint at the connection between two important annual festivals. John himself testifies that he must decrease, while the other—Christ—increases. When the day is at its longest, it is St. John’s Day. But behind the outward, material appearance in all its transience, something rises that is beautifully expressed in the Gospel of John with the words: “And the light shone in the darkness,” into the waning days of St. John. Within the darkness lives the light that is brighter and more alive than all material manifestations of light—the spiritual light. And the life of the great light in the darkness is the essence of the Christian Christmas celebration, which was observed in all religions in ancient times and which prophetically pointed to the great spiritual Sun Hero, Christ Jesus.

[ 2 ] Today, through the spiritual-scientific worldview, we understand the Christian Christmas celebration, which for two millennia has been experienced as the festival of great idealism. When, on Christmas Eve, in the darkness of midnight, the service begins and the lights are lit, they shine out into the darkness. This means that when, one day, everything on Earth will be doomed to an outward death—just as everything purely human will succumb to death—then, as Christ made it a reality, the triumphant soul will live within the body, rising from its physical shell to a life of light, even as the Earth, as a material body, shatters into countless atoms. Out of this darkness, this downfall of the Earth, the soul of the entire Earth will rise, together with all human souls that will be absorbed into this Earth soul. And so that not only the Earth soul might achieve this, but so that all people on Earth might also have the same certainty—for this, Christ Jesus was the model, the ideal.

[ 3 ] And so it is not only the physical sun that is the image of the Christ Being, but specifically the rising spiritual sun. When all forces have been transformed and the Earth’s body is ablaze with love, then the Earth will be completely permeated by the Christ Principle. The light of Christmas is the symbol of this.

[ 4 ] The Three Kings are symbols, just as their gifts are: gold, a symbol of wisdom and royal power; myrrh, a symbol of the victory over death; and frankincense, a symbol of the spiritualized etheric substances in which God—who has overcome death—manifests Himself. Through these three symbols, Christ stands as King, as the conqueror of death, as the fulfillment of all earthly evolution. Everyone initiated into esotericism thus perceives the birth of the Child of God, foreshadowed in the Mysteries even before the time of Christ and experienced even afterward. The Mysteries were not ecclesiastical institutions or schools in the external sense, but rather places of education and worship, where people learned wisdom, surrender, and faith—which is at once knowledge and insight. There were Greater and Lesser Mysteries. Those admitted after undergoing various trials witnessed, in the Lesser Mysteries, dramatic representations of the eternal truths that the higher-initiated experience within themselves. The greatest moments in human development can be compared, on a small scale, to the experiences of someone born blind who undergoes surgery: a whole new world opens up to them. The eyes of the spirit are opened to the initiate. A world of the spirit unfolds before them in light and color—a completely new world, far greater than the physical one, with all its beings and inhabitants. All things seem animated to him. At this moment, the initiates experience the birth of their higher self. This was called the inner Feast of Christ. What these chosen ones were able to experience—and what initiates can still experience today—was, for the others in the Lesser Mysteries, an ideal that they were all permitted to hope to attain, some sooner, others later. Whoever knows that everyone must go through many lives can be certain that within them, too, their awakening—that initiation—will one day become a reality; that the awakening of the Christ within them will be achieved, that Christmas when the light will shine within them. Then that saying from the Gospel of John will be reversed: “And the light will be grasped in the darkness.”

[ 5 ] This, then, was depicted in the Mysteries. What took place as the great Christian event was a physical reenactment of what had unfolded in the Mysteries for every initiate—in the Lesser Mysteries as an image, and in the Greater Mysteries within the human being. In the Lesser Mysteries, the significant experience of the inner Christ was depicted at a very specific time of year, when the sun sends the least light into the world—during the longest winter night—as is still the case today at Christmas. Let us visualize the image that symbolized the meaning of inner human development in the Lesser Mysteries. In a sacred, solemn atmosphere, the people who were to witness it gathered at Christmas, in the utter darkness of midnight. Then a peculiar, muffled, thunderous roar rang out, gradually transforming into wonderful rhythmic tones, into harmonious sounds—the music of the spheres. And a faintly illuminated form, a sphere glowing dimly in the darkness, became visible, symbolizing the Earth. From the faintly glowing disk of the Earth, rainbow-colored rings—interflowing and corresponding to the tones—gradually emerged, spreading out in all directions—the divine Iris. Thus, in ancient Atlantis, the Niflheim of Germanic mythology, the sun shone through the mist for the people. The apparition grew ever brighter, and the seven colors gradually gave way to a faint gold and a faint violet. And the form shone ever more brightly, and the light grew ever more powerful, until it transformed into the brightest celestial body, the sun. In the center of this sun appeared—in the respective language of the people concerned—the name of Christ. For the person who had participated in this celebration, the significant saying applied: “He saw the sun at midnight.” This means that a symbol of spiritual vision had appeared to him. The person whose spiritual eye is open experiences that all matter becomes transparent; he sees through the earth; he actually sees the sun at midnight; he overcomes matter. The sun appears to him at midnight in inverted colors, in a violet-reddish hue. What appears as a cosmic phenomenon in the great world symbol is, for the Christian—translated into human terms—the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth. We will all see the sun at midnight. This is also in no way contradictory to the New Testament.

[ 6 ] Thus, Christ is the Being who will transfigure that which is still connected to the lower realms and deify that which is still connected to the worldly. He is the sun in the spiritual realm. The Christian esotericist or theosophical Christian perceives Christ Jesus in this way. At the time when the cold and darkness on Earth are at their greatest, spiritual awakening takes place, because the initiates know that at that time certain forces move through the cosmos and the constellation of forces is then most favorable for spiritual awakening. The disciples were taught that they should not be content with ordinary human knowledge, but must learn to survey all of humanity and the entire history of the Earth. “Look back to the time,” the students were told, “when the Earth was still united with the Sun and the Moon. Humanity at that time lived in the light of the Sun. What the Earth was later to become was filled with spiritual power, which shone forth simultaneously within every being.” - Then came the moment when the Sun separated from the Earth, when light shone down on the Earth from outside, and when darkness fell within the human being. This moment marks the beginning of humanity’s evolution toward that distant future when it will once again carry sunlight within itself. Then the higher human being—the solar human—will develop within humanity, one who carries light within and possesses the power of enlightenment.

[ 7 ] Thus the Earth arose from the light; it passes through the darkness and will return to the sunlight. Just as the power of the sun’s rays diminishes toward fall and during the winter months, so too does the spiritual realm recede entirely during the time when human beings are meant to learn to perceive the external things of the Earth—matter. But the spiritual force grows once more, and at Christmas time, what Paul expressed through the parable of the grain of wheat comes to pass. If the sown grain does not perish in the earth, no new fruit can come into being. During the Christmas season, the old life passes away, and new life arises within it. From this day forward, the sap rises in the trees; new life springs forth; and light begins to grow once more amid the darkness that had been increasing until then. This is what the Christian contemplates, translated into the spiritual realm. Everything in matter that pulls downward must pass away to make room for that which sprouts upward. Christ came into the world so that, as it were, what is to lead upward toward the highest might be born out of lowliness. In the stable of the Gospel narrative, we see a transformation, a variation on what ancient wisdom called a cave. The festival was celebrated in hollowed-out rocks, varying from one people to another. The next day brought a second festival, which demonstrated how sprouting life emerges from the earth and from the rock. This, too, was a symbol of the spiritual emerging from the dying earthly realm.

[ 8 ] Everywhere—in the inner sanctuaries of Egypt, in the Eleusinian Mysteries and the Orphic cult in Greece, in the Near East, among the Babylonians and Chaldeans, in the Persian cult of Mithras, and in the mysteries of India—Christmas was celebrated in the same way: To those participating in the Lesser Mysteries, what the initiates experienced was seen as a sensory representation. What was depicted was a prophetic indication of the birth of the Christ in humanity. Such initiates, who have already attained this, are said to have reached the sixth stage. There were seven such stages: On the first stage was the raven, which mediated the connection between the spiritual realm and the outer world. Thus, the Bible speaks of Elijah’s ravens, and legend tells of Wotan’s ravens or even of Emperor Barbarossa’s ravens at Kyffhäuser.

[ 9 ] The occultist occupied the second level. He had already been admitted to the sanctuary and was inside it.

[ 10 ] The third degree was that of the warrior or fighter. Those who attained it were permitted to advocate for spiritual truths to the outside world.

[ 11 ] Those who reached the fourth degree were called lions. Their consciousness had expanded beyond that of their individuality to encompass the consciousness of the entire tribe. Consider, for example, the lion of the tribe of Judah.

[ 12 ] The fifth-degree initiate not only possessed tribal consciousness but had also incorporated the consciousness of the national spirit into his own. He therefore received the name of his people; among the Persians, for example, he was called the “Persian.” Jesus calls Nathanael a “true Israelite”; Jesus recognizes in him the fifth-degree initiate.

[ 13 ] The term used to describe one who has reached the sixth stage refers to an important characteristic. When we look around at nature, we see natural beings evolving upward from the lowest forms to human beings, and from the average human being upward to the one who allows Christ to be born within them. In the lower beings, we see rhythm everywhere in life—a rhythm imposed on them by the sun. Plants always bloom at the same time of year, depending on their species, and open their flowers, each species at the same time of day. Animals, too, exhibit their annual rhythm in important life functions. Only human beings are increasingly losing this regularity. He becomes free from the compulsion of the rhythm that was originally imposed upon him as well. But when love for all beings awakens within him and floods him, then a new rhythm of his own is born from within him. This rhythm is now as regular as that of the sun, which never deviates even slightly from its course—one could scarcely imagine the consequences of such a deviation. In the initiate of the sixth degree, one saw a reflection of the course of the life-giving sun in the cosmos, the image of Christ in humanity and in the spiritual world. That is why the sixth degree was called the “Sun Hero.”

[ 14 ] A shiver ran through the soul of the disciple who beheld such a hero of the sun. In him, the Christ was born inwardly. This was an event that was experienced as a birth on the spiritual plane. The initiates of the first centuries placed the birth of the historical Jesus during the outwardly darkest time of the year, because the spiritual sun had risen at that time. That is why the first Christians also introduced the midnight Mass, a ritual centered on the dark hour of midnight, when a sea of light would then shine upon the altar. The highest degree was that of the Father.

[ 15 ] What had so often taken place in private within the Mysteries, far removed from all external events, unfolded openly in world history through Christ Jesus. Nothing higher can be experienced in the human soul than what was brought about externally in the physical world by the Conqueror of Death, the Bearer of the pledge of eternal life for the soul. What sprang forth from the dying world as a new fruit of life was perceived by the initiates as the birth of the Christ Child in the spiritual world. Anyone who does not think of the spiritual realm as separate from the physical world feels a deep connection between the sun at Christmas and the spiritual life that develops out of the life of the world. Christmas presents the birth of the greatest ideal that exists for the world—one that will be realized when the Earth reaches its goal. What is now prophetically proclaimed will one day become reality. Just as the love that conquers death comes to life in the radiant Christmas tree, so too will it come to life within all human beings in the future. It stands before us now as a vision.

[ 16 ] In the spirit of Christmas, we feel something that comes to us from far away, yet has always been celebrated since time immemorial. With true understanding, this holiday will once again take on a much deeper meaning for us. The tree, too, will become more important to us as a symbol of that tree of paradise, which you all know from Genesis. Paradise is, after all, a symbol of the higher human nature, untainted by evil. Knowledge could only be attained at the cost of life. A legend illustrates how this was viewed by those who knew: When Seth wanted to return to Paradise, the cherub with the flaming sword let him in. There he found that the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge were intertwined. At the cherub’s instruction, he was allowed to take three seeds from this united tree. The tree represents what humanity is destined to become and what only the initiate has already attained. When Adam had died, Seth took the three seeds and placed them in Adam’s mouth. From them sprang a flaming bush, on which were inscribed the words: “Ejeh Asher ejeh”—“I am who I am, who was, and who will be.” The legend goes on to say that Moses fashioned his staff of miracles from it. Later, the gate of Solomon’s Temple was built from the same wood. Then a piece of it fell into the Pool of Bethesda and endowed it with miraculous power. And finally, the cross of Christ was fashioned from it. It is a symbol of life that is dying, passing away in death, yet possesses within itself the power to bring forth new life.

[ 17 ] A great symbol stands before us: life that has overcome death, the wood from the seed of Paradise. The Rose Cross represents this life that passes away and is reborn. It was not without reason, then, that the great Goethe said:

And as long as you don't have that,
This: Die and Be Reborn!
You are but a gloomy guest
On this dark earth.

[ 18 ] What a wonderful connection between the tree of Paradise, the wood of the cross, and the life that springs from it! To experience the birth of the eternal human being within temporal life—that is what the idea of Christ, what Christmas, should be for us. Human beings must already apply this to themselves: “The light shines in the darkness,” and gradually the darkness must comprehend the light. All the souls in whom Christmas kindles the right spark will feel vividly what Christmas brings to life within them—the capacity that will develop into a power enabling them to see, feel, and will in such a way that the saying is reversed, so that it reads: “The light shines into the darkness, and the darkness has gradually come to understand the light.”