Christmas or Xmas

I remember in my childhood days, I began to notice that people wrote Christmas as "Xmas". I did not think twice about it, as people told me that it is just an easier way to wrote the long word.

As I became a Christian, I notice other Christians reacted negatively to this shorten form, saying that people have remove Christ even out of Christmas. Some even openly say that no Christian should write the X to replace Christ...

But any one can do a bit of research, what I found is that the "X" is not English alphabet, but Greek, it is the letter "Chi" , the initial letter of "Christ" in Greek. (Mind you, that The New Testament was originally written in Greek, the Greek is the official language, not English! )

If you think negative of Christ and put a big X there, surely you would turn Christmas into another episode of X-File, something comparable to the strange fiction, that fact is even hard to believe. All you get is truly a Xmas.

But if you follow the old tradition of using initials of Christ in Greek, (the most common one is the Xp combination, the first 2 letters of Christ in Greek, chi-rho, not English), you will not be erasing Christ, but getting back into the root of the whole thing.

Next time, when you see Xmas, just remind yourself that it is Greek!

What's the point about Christmas?

The center key figure of Christmas is missing from todays culture. We can do all the shopping, dinners, and home gathering as much as we want but we can not find the focus of Christmas in them. These are not bad things on its own, but can hardly give meaning to Christmas.

What then is Christmas?Well, the name sys it all, it is CHRIST-mas. No wonder Christmas is never fulfilling if we left Christ out from our lives.

Without Christ in this holiday, we will revert back to traditions, home-comings (oh, do I pity those poor travelers got stuck in various airports during this cold holiday weekend!), feasts for no particular occasion, and making a lot of substitution, making Santa, the tree, the lights as the focal points. We have displaced Jesus Christ from our hearts and replaced by all these commercialized stuffs into our mind.

When we feel something is missing, what else to do? Well, people just keep doing more, thinking more of everything could fill up our lives, i.e. more shopping, more wine more food, more partying more fun. It will turned into a big vicious cycle.

That's it, the more we try to remove Christ from Christmas, the more we will feel unfulfilled at Christmas.

Christmas Mood

We were in the city center just a couple of days before Christmas. To our surprise, we felt the Christmas Season atmosphere has dampened in compare to our memories of yesteryears. We saw fews lights, fewer decorations, fewer Santas, very few traditional Christmas carols, though there is no shortage of people wandering back and fro looking for something.

It causes us to wonder, what should be the Christmas atmosphere?
Perhaps we all have different expectations groomed by our year after year celebration. What is your concept of a "merry Christmas"?

This may be a short list of your expectations:

1. Christmas cards: this used to be the first reminder of Christmas when we open the mail box way before the holidays and began to receive REAL Christmas cards, then hang them up on a string... but how many cards did you receive this year? Some how, even e-cards are getting fewer and fewer...
2. Christmas gifts: great excuse to go shopping, probably people enjoy the long hours of shopping experiences more than the people to whom they give the gifts to!
3. Christmas deco & lights: great photo session with friends and a must for boy/girl friend.
4. Santa: another great photo session especially for those who have young kids.
5. Christmas songs and /or the annual church event: surely it is time to get emerge into 'proper' Christmas spirit with the oldies tunes.
6. Christmas home deco & tree & huge family reunion with the long lost cousins: Keep busy...
   
7. Christmas dinner: no excuse not to go! Otherwise will surely feel like a scrooge to eat by your self on the 24th.
8. If none of the above appeal to you, there is always the last but not the least option: fly away to a strange land to break away from the familiar home town atmosphere.

What is Christmas to you?

Merry Christmas and Happy new year 2011

Time surely flies.

Now we are at the close of 2010 and it will be a new year before you know it.
We will be re-starting the blog once again.
Do drop in for a visit soon.


Cheers.