It takes an effort to keep Christ in Christmas.  So many things come to dilute, replace, and expunge Jesus Christ from our Christmas holiday.  Have you been watching as each year we are requested to be more and more politically correct, open, and accepting, to other holidays being celebrated at this time of year, but Jesus is being eliminated more and more?

Doesn’t it just irk you that they’ve even taken Christ out of the word “Christmas,” by replacing it with an “X”: Xmas?

The letter X is actually the Greek letter Chi. Xmas has been used for hundreds of years in religious writing, where the X represents a Greek chi, the first letter of Χριστος, “Christ.” In this use, it is parallel to other forms like Xtian, “Christian.” People, unaware of the Greek origin of this X, often mistakenly interpret Xmas as an informal shortening pronounced (ĕks’məs). No longer need we frown upon the term Xmas, because it actually declares of Christ just as clearly as before, only in another language. We can look at it as code for boldly stating our true devotion.

Some believe that the term is part of an effort to “take Christ out of Christmas” or to literally “cross out Christ”; it is seen as evidence of the secularization of Christmas, as a symptom of the commercialization of the holiday (as the abbreviation has long been used by retailers).

In addition, the occasionally held belief that the “X” represents the cross on which Christ was crucified also has no basis in fact. Indeed, X-as-chi was associated with Christ long before X-as-cross could be, since the cross as a Christian symbol developed later. While some see the spelling of Christmas as Xmas a threat, others see it as a way to honor the martyrs. The use of X as an abbreviation for “cross” in modern abbreviated writing may have reinforced this assumption.

However we wish to communicate with one another, may we find ways to use the name of Christ in this most beloved of holidays. This Xmas, may Christ come to you with Christ-like love in your hearts, Christ-centered devotion to His ways, and Christ’s Spirit in your homes.