The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Xmas does not take Christ out of Christmas

Practices Christian Living
#1

Every year in December this false notion appears in church newsletters or elsewhere. I encountered it again today (Dec 14).

It is said that the use of “Xmas” takes “Christ” out of “Christmas” and replaces it with an unknown.

Yes, if we’re talking algebra, it is true that X represents an unknown.

But that is not the case with “Xmas”. The Greek word for “Christ” is “ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ” (CHRISTOS), AND the first letter “X” (chi), is but an abbreviation for “ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ.”

If you attend a traditional church or have visited traditional churches, you have probably encountered the following symbol:

[size=180]☧[/size]

This symbol (the first two letters of “ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ” is a symbol for “Christ”.

Thus the word “Xmas” does not remove “Christ” from “Christmas” and replace it with an unknown. Rather it uses the abbreviation “X” for “Christ.”

So Merry Xmas, everyone!

#2

Oh goodness, it irritates me when people say that. Thanks for the explanation, Paidion :wink:

#3

Paidion is correct.

I think the most effective way to take Christ out of Christmas is for Christians to not go to church on Christmas day.

#4

Thanks for posting this information. I wasn’t aware of this before today.

#5

This is a classic case of what we call “blindness”. We took Christ out of Christmas the day we turned it into one big shopping spree. :frowning:

#6

Don’t forget most Protestants also took the “mass” out of Christmas (Christ’s Mass).

The first Christmas took place in the fourth century by celebrating three masses in honour of the three births of Christ:

  1. His birth before all ages.

  2. His birth from the virgin Mary.

  3. His birth in the hearts of the faithful.

Prior to the fourth century, Christians did not celebrate the birth of Christ.

#7

Thanks for the reminder, Paidion! :smiley:

Now if we could only keep Him in the forefront and all the profit-driven commercialism in the outer darkness!

#8

There is some evidence they did, namely what’s now called Michaelmass (the Feast of Michael and all Angels), which would have been (as Sept 29 by modern calenders) the start of the Feast of Tabernacles in the year Christ was born (according to one reckoning of the year evidence – not AD 1).

There’s a fascinating tale (quite epic in some extended versions) passed down among non-Christian rabbis in late antiquity and the medieval period, as a sort of myth to account for various details about Christianity that they found annoying – about how Simon Peter was really an orthodox Jewish sage who voluntarily sacrificed his reputation to lead the Nazarenes to stop going to Jewish feasts on one hand and to treat Jews with self-sacrificial kindness on the other hand – and one of the points the non-Christian Jews were “explaining” this way is why Christians celebrated the birth and circumcision of “the Crucified” instead of Tabernacles and Atonement.

What’s especially curious about this part of the legend is that the earliest we can track it back is around the 7th century, long after they should have been coming up with explanations about why Christians celebrate specifically on Dec 25th (and/or early January) – which a connection to pagan festivals would have provided some hot ammunition! Also, this legendary explanation connects the abandonment of Tabernacles/Atonement to the abandonment of Passover and Pentacost, but those two explanations are connected directly to substitutions which are celebrated at the same times as before (more or less, since the Pascha / Easter isn’t celebrated exactly on Passover full moon calculations anymore but on the nearest Friday-Saturday-Sunday block afterward; this also naturally affecting Whitsunday, which many Protestants have dropped altogether now.)

The implication is that the Jews were remembering a time when Christians started celebrating events of Christ’s birth, death, resurrection, and ascension, at around the same time as Passover, Pentacost, and Tabernacles: a point they thought Simon Peter taught the Nazarenes but which they had to explain because, at least as far down as the 7th century, at least one of Peter’s liturgical hymns that he wrote after becoming a ‘Nazarene’ was still being sung in synagogues! :open_mouth:

But yeah, the Christian evidence of celebrating Christ’s birth before Constantine in the 300s is spotty at best. That silence is hard to explain in any case; it isn’t like GosMatt and GosLuke weren’t popularly accepted as canon before then. (GosMatt was the most popular Gospel by far, on the contrary!)

#9

(Note that Michaelmass today in any case isn’t about Christ’s birth, but about Michael defeating Satan and throwing him out of heaven. But it still retains a few interesting connections to Tabernacles/Atonement, such as in British lands being the day of settling accounts after harvests.)

#10

Okay, when early Christians celebrated Pascha and the resurrection, they may have included every aspect of Christ’s life including his birth.
But I think the fact remains that prior to the fourth century, a specific celebration of the birth of Christ was not carried out.

#11

Or possibly it was early lost after the destruction of the Temple.

Admittedly, I don’t understand why that would have been lost when Passover wasn’t – the Greco-Romanization of Christianity didn’t affect that (or not so drastically). But then it’s a mystery why some day wasn’t chosen on whatever ground to celebrate His birth. There were one or two very popular apocryphal Gospels circulating to flesh out details on that, so it wasn’t like people were ignoring GosLuke’s and (especially not) GosMatt’s infancy prologues. And Luke provides fertile clues in his nativity narrative to place the general time of year according to the Course of Abijah. Which works out to one of two options, since there are two times a year that family was supposed to serve aside from the great feasts. One of those options then being a birth at Tabernacles, not incidentally. After which it looks overly coincidental that Michaelmass, even if in its oldest traceable form it dates to the 400s, occurs not only on the start of Tabernacles for one of the commonly theorized birth years, but also happens to be 40 weeks after Dec 25th – 40 being special as a completion number due to that being the average (or perfect) weeks of conception to birth.

Which in turn makes the Imperial decision in the 300s to start celebrating a Mass for Christ’s birth on Dec 25th, look rather more genius than simply attaching it a little in front of a popular Mithras ‘birth’ holiday (which was more specifically the winter solstice). Though that, too. :wink:

#12

VERY cool, Jason. I hadn’t heard any of that. Thanks!

#13

Of course they were not ignoring the records of the birth of Christ and his infancy. However, that doesn’t imply that they would celebrate his birth. So I see no mystery here. Indeed, it seems the pre-fourth-century Christians celebrated no aspect of Christ’s life here on earth except his death and resurrection. And that they did every Sunday via the eucharist.