The Phil Files

We are entering the holiday zone and the battle over keeping Christ in Christmas and God in Thanksgiving will heat up again. The minions of political correctness and marketers in the name of not offending anyone to whom they want to market their goods will homogenize this time, trying to keep everyone happy. In the process, they end up secularizing a time that for many of us should be holy ground. However, there is a misunderstood exception to this trend.

X-mas!

While some have used this abbreviation for Christmas to try and separate it from Jesus’ birth. The reality of the term, however, is exactly the opposite. X-mas is the ultimate way to mark Christmas as a time to honor Christ. Let me explain.

You see, the first letter of the word Christ in the original language, Greek, is chi — shaped like our letter x. When capitalized, it is shaped just our capital letter X. This was an abbreviation widely used by early disciples of Jesus to stand for Christ. It was probably more widely used in early years of Christianity than the standard cross symbol or the fish symbol. In many of the early copies of New Testament documents, X with a line over the top was used as the symbol for Christ. This appears to have been done for several reasons:

1. Clarity — because the word “christos” means “the anointed one,” but when used specifically for Jesus Christ, the symbol clearly set Him apart as God’s Christ, the Messiah.
2. Cross — the letter itself is shaped in the form of a cross and thus captures the full meaning of God’s Christ, the anointed one who went to the Cross of Golgotha for us.
3. Compact — it saved spaced in hand copied documents while highlighting Christ as special.

Sometimes we get bent out of shape about things that are important and vital to our faith. Having a holy passion for God’s holiness and respect for His name — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — is often a good thing. But on this one, I fear we sometimes have what the apostle Paul calls, “zeal apart from knowledge” (Romans 10:2). X for believers means one thing — Jesus is the Christ. For me, that’s a good thing — a holy thing. I’m keeping X in my world, and I hope you do, too.

So I’m going to keep the X in X-mas. In fact, I want there to be a huge X in my heart and imprinted on my life. I want X to still mark the spot where the grace of heaven met the ugliest realities of humanity the Cross., There Jesus Christ showed who He was all along — the Son of God, the Lord of heaven and earth, God with us, King of King and Lord of Lords, the One who was and is and is to come, who freed us from our sins by blood, the Faithful Witness and the long awaited Christ about whom the prophets spoke.

To X be the glory.