The Feasts of Christmas and Easter, celebrated every year throughout Christendom to commemorate the birth and resurrection of Jesus, are part of an ancient esoteric tradition which existed long before the Christian era. The fact that they coincide with the winter solstice and the spring equinox is evidence of their cosmic significance and teaches that man, who also belongs to cosmic reality, is intimately associated with the processes of gestation, birth and blossoming which take place in nature. Christmas and Easter, the second birth and the resurrection, are really two different ways of celebrating the regeneration of man and his birth into the spiritual world.