The True Meaning of Christmas
To all of our brothers and sisters around the world, Merry Christmas! Every year on December 25, more than two billion people celebrate Christmas globally — a time-honored Christian holiday commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ.
True Parents, who have continued the work of the Messiah, long shared the dispensational importance of Jesus and Christianity in God’s providence. In his speech, “The True Meaning of Christmas,” True Father highlighted the historical significance of Jesus’s enduring love and sacrifice, which brought the spiritual salvation of humanity, and what it means to truly celebrate Christmas.
Below is an excerpt from True Father’s timeless message, delivered Dec. 25, 1979 at the World Mission Center.
Christmas is truly the celebration of the birth of God's son, but without knowing God's purpose for sending him there cannot truly be a celebration of Christmas... If something is logical then it should be consistent from beginning to end. Christianity today is a worldwide religion which has prospered for 2,000 years, yet today it is entangled in confusion and chaos. Why?
Because the beginning and end of today's Christian thought are not consistent. Look at the contradictions in Christian thought and Christian practice: Jesus came to build one world, but contrary to Jesus's will there are now several hundred denominations dividing Christianity and greater division has been brought about. No matter how people try, they cannot justify this...
It was because the people did not accept Jesus that the crucifixion, which was contrary to God's Will, came about... God's desire is to have one world and so Jesus came to bring unity. But some Christians ignore this because they are more concerned with maintaining the power of their own denomination. When they disregard God's ideal and promote their own, they are acting like traitors...
We need a Messiah because we want to have God-centered love, and only the Messiah can give us that love. Jesus needed to eat and sleep like everyone else, but Jesus led a life that God could rejoice over; that was the difference. We need Jesus in order to learn his way of life, so that we can inherit the tradition of unstained heavenly love. In order to do that we have to follow his way of life...
People are celebrating the wrong kind of Christmas... We are handpicked by God to vindicate Jesus and liberate the heart of God by accomplishing what Jesus left undone... No other people are truly responding to the call of God. We are given the divine mission which no one else is undertaking. There is nothing greater or more important to God and Jesus and mankind than establishing the tradition of God's love.
Christmas Day is the perfect day for repentance, for checking how much you have truly lived as Jesus's representative and loved the world as he did. We are the only people inheriting the true tradition of Christmas which God conceived in His heart. The true meaning of Christmas is the tradition of the true love of God.
The perfect gift for anyone this season, you can learn more about True Parents’ life in True Father’s autobiography available here and True Mother’s memoir here.