At this time of the year you always see the shops with decorations and such like, and I remember seeing over the years a bunch of places that would make a point of putting Merry Xmas in the windows, I would guess the idea is not to offend people at this time of year.
After all there are many people that do not celebrate Christmas. Some out of religious belief, some from an issue with it being about Jesus being born in December when they believe he was not. Others have their own reasons and my point is not really about that.
However in this country, we have gone politically correct mad, and as a result people have tried to take Christ out of Christmas with their Xmas banners.
I started thinking about this today - first we know that one of the major reasons that we celebrate Jesus birth at this time of the year is down to Roman Catholics way back when Rome had power over a vast majority of the world, their Emperor Constantine who had once been a pagan was converted to Christianity, however did not wish to alienate the people by removing a long standing tradition and so simply replaced it with a Holy day for the people as the time to celebrate Christmas and the birth of our saviour.
Now the bible doesn't actually state when Jesus was born, and the experts tend to lean towards some point at the end of September - due to the facts stated in the bible, Mary would likely not have travelled in the harsh cold that this time of year brings in the region. But it was very common and acceptable for people to travel at the end of September during a season called feast of the tabernacles.
But whenever Jesus was actually born, or why we have this date in December as a celebration doesn't really change the point of the celebration. You see without Christ there can not be a Christmas.
Let me explain.
Christmas itself comes from the joining of two words Christ (obviously) and mass which originally one form of the word meant sent. So although we often celebrate it as the birth of Christ the celebration itself is actually of the fact that Christ was sent. Mass is also what liturgical Churches call the celebration of the Lord's Supper, and what we refer to as communion. So you take the celebration of the Lord's supper, and the celebration of the sending of the Christ, and it doesn't matter what the date it -
1 corinthians 11:23-26 Paul tells us of the words of Jesus himself, that every time we eat and drink of the bread and cup we proclaim Christ - you don't need a set date for that - a lot of churches do it every week, some every month.
However there is something else that made me think about all this. The political correctness try to stop offending other faiths by taking Christ out of the Christmas celebration, they call this time of year the holiday season, or chance the very name of Christmas itself to simple Xmas.
That is the part that I get a kick out of - they try, but they can not take Christ out of this time of year. And here is why - before the Cross became a symbol of Christianity, a widely recognised symbol for Christians was the Chi Rho.The symbol is that of an X and a P merged. So why the X???
The X is the first letter of the Greek word for Christ - Χριστός
So when you see X mas in place of Christmas - its not actually any different - its still proclaiming Christ Sent!!!!!
How great is that!!!!!!
