Dec
23
Keeping Christ in Xmas
“28 Simeon took Him [i.e., the baby Jesus] up in his arms, praised God, and said: 29 Now, Master, You can dismiss Your slave in peace, as You promised. 30 For my eyes have seen Your salvation. 31 You have prepared it in the presence of all peoples — 32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles and glory to Your people Israel.” — Luke 2:28-32 (HCSB)
The other day on Facebook, I re-shared an older blogpost with the following introductory comment:
“Here’s a Xmas post I put together a few years ago…”
As I might have expected, a well-meaning, Christian friend soon commented that I should have written out “Christmas”. Rather than acknowledging this and editing my comment, I decided to explain why I didn’t have a problem with the abbreviation. This is how I responded to “V”, as I will call her:
1) FYI, I usually spell it out but, for whatever reason, shortened it this time.
2) The usual objection to “Xmas” is something along the lines of: By removing the letters “Christ” from the word “Christmas”, secularists are pushing their agenda to remove Jesus Christ from the true meaning of Christmas. If you think that’s me, that would be both surprising and sad.
3) Fact is, early on the NT scribes (i.e., those making handwritten copies for distribution) developed a system of abbreviations for common words to save space. They usually included the first and last letter of the word, though slightly longer words might have slightly longer abbreviations. Among the most common abbreviations were for the (Greek words for) God, Lord, Jesus, Christ, Son, and Spirit (that last one having 3 letters). My use of “Xmas” for “Christmas” is no more an affront or sign of disrespect than that of an early Christian copyist using “ΧΣ” (or “χς“) for “Christos”.
She didn’t respond, and I didn’t bother to press the matter. However, when I looked for my original post again a couple days later, I saw that “V” — note that I am using her first initial to refer to her, no disrespect intended — had deleted her comment (and, thus, my subordinate reply). Oh, well, no biggie.
Earlier that day, I had received an email with an article by the late R.C. Sproul, adapted from his book Now, That’s a Good Question!. Sproul — who can hardly be called a secularist — points out that the ‘X’ in “Xmas” is not merely a filler, nor does it represent any of the usual things. Rather, it is the transliteration for the Greek letter “chi”, which is the first letter in “Christos”. (Sound familiar?) The article finishes with the following:
“The idea of X as an abbreviation for the name of Christ came into use in our culture with no intent to show any disrespect for Jesus. The church has used the symbol of the fish historically because it is an acronym. Fish in Greek (ichthus) involved the use of the first letters for the Greek phrase “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.” So the early Christians would take the first letter of those words and put those letters together to spell the Greek word for fish. That’s how the symbol of the fish became the universal symbol of Christendom. There’s a long and sacred history of the use of X to symbolize the name of Christ, and from its origin, it has meant no disrespect.”
I don’t deny that God, the Bible, and Christianity in general are under assault from various directions. But, I agree with Sproul that the use of “Xmas” is not nearly as big a deal as some Christians have come to believe. Sure, some non-Christians might be using “Xmas” in an effort to remove some religious notion from the holiday. They may do this more due to their own discomfort than with the intent to offend. Depends on the person and their state of mind, I suppose. On the other hand, it seems to me these people will more likely use “Seasons Greetings!” (which is fine) or “Happy Holidays!”, anyway.
Personally, I will probably still write out “Christmas” more often (unless I’m short on space or rushed). But, I’m not gonna get annoyed when others use “Xmas”, and I hope you won’t, either.
Merry Xmas, everyone!
