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| Greek letters: chi, rho |
Because I presumed it unnecessary, a week ago I would have not considered writing this post; but then yesterday I overheard the conversation of two women at my tennis club. They were looking at a poster advertising an upcoming "Xmas Party," and they were incensed at the use of "Xmas."
"Look at that," the one woman said, "They are trying to take Christ out of Christmas.This is blasphemy!"
"I know it," the other replied. "It's all part of the diabolical War on Christmas. They're the same people who say 'Happy Holidays' instead of 'Merry Christmas.' They even call a Christmas tree a Holiday tree. We have to fight to keep Christ in Christmas."
Listening to this I realized I was part of the aforementioned "they," and I was wondering what kind of "fight" they had in mind -- from their demeanor, I presumed they wanted blood and it would be a knife fight. Being the chicken I am, I slipped away without engaging the two enraged ladies.
I had been under the impression that this whole "controversy" about taking Chist out of Christmas by using the word, Xmas, was an old 1950's and 60's discredited slogan, but apparently I was once again mistaken.
Had I not been fearful of a knife fight, I should have informed the ladies of the following.
The "X" in Xmas does not refer to the mathematical x (the unknown quantity), but it does refer to "Christ."
The Greek letter "X" (chi) was a standard abbreviation used by the early Christians to refer to Christos (Christ). Early Roman Christians carved it into the walls of the catacombs as code for Christ.
A fish symbol was also used to represent Christ because the Greek word, ichthus (in Roman letters), is the word for "fish." To the early Christians it was an acronym for "jeseous christos theou uios soter" Jesus Christ son of God savior." The 2nd letter in the Greek word is "x" -- representing "Christ." Christians who have fish symbol on their cars are in effect using the Greek chi (x) to represent Christ. So why go ballistic at the use of "Xmas"?
The red symbol used at the begininng of this post has been used by Christians throughout history as a symbol of Christ. It combines the two Greek letters chi (x) and rho (p) which is an "r" in the Roman alphabet to represent the first two letters of "Christos."
Now that I have that off my chest, I am going to turn on the Fox Network (notice I did not say "News") to hear Bill O'Reilly and Sarah Palin bring me up to date on the "War on Christmas." Have you ever noticed that conservatives tend to see all of life in militaristic terms? Everything is a war -- or a knife fight.
