Every year there are signs and bumper stickers saying, “Put Christ back into Christmas” as a response to this substitution of the letter X for the name of Christ, but historically it's not the letter X that's being substituted for Christ. Actually what it is is a shorthand for the Greek name for Christ (Christos).
The first letter of the Greek word Christos is Chi which looks like our letter X. There’s a long history in the church of the use of X to symbolize the name of Christ, and from the time of its origin, it has meant the opposite of any attempt to avoid naming Christ.
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| Gr: Christos |
The irony is that probably a lot of people do use Xmas to exclude Christ from Christmas and have no idea what the origin of it is.
A popular Christmas tradition that has grown up over the years is to decorate one's home with a "Christmas" tree.
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| Painting by Marcel Reider (1898) |
Modern Christmas trees originated during the Renaissance of early modern Germany. Its 16th-century origins are sometimes associated with protestant reformer Martin Luther, who is said to have first added lighted candles to an evergreen tree. The practice is believed to have spread among Luther's followers in Germany and eventually throughout Europe.
No doubt the most popular Christmas myth is that of Santa Claus. There's a rich ancient heritage behind the Santa Claus story. The secularized, sanitized, contemporary version has its origin in Christian history, and specifically in a man named Nicholas.
Much exaggerated legendary material is connected with his life and ministry, but if nothing else, the legends tell us what values and beliefs the church held as important as they were projected onto Nicholas. To the bare minimum of facts, legend has supplied intriguing details through such writers as St. Methodius (patriarch of Constantinople in the 850s) and the Greek writer Metaphrastes in the 10th century.
The story goes that Nicholas was born in Lycia in southern Turkey in A.D. 280 to pious and wealthy parents who raised him to love God and taught him the Christian faith from the age of five.
However, his parents died suddenly when he was still young, and Nicholas was forced to grow up quickly.
Inheriting his family's wealth, he was left rich and lonely, but he had the desire to use his wealth for good. The first opportunity to do this happened when he heard about a father of three daughters who, through an unfortunate turn of events, was left destitute.
Without marriage dowry money, the daughters could be condemned to a life of singleness and prostitution, so Nicholas threw some small bags of gold coins into the window of the home (some traditions say down the chimney), thereby saving the children from a life of misery.
Later, Nicholas made a pilgrimage to Egypt and Palestine. Upon returning home he felt called to ministry and was subsequently ordained. He spent time at the Monastery of Holy Zion near Myra in Turkey until an old priest had a vision that he was to be the new bishop.
The congregation overwhelmingly approved him, and he became known for his holiness, passion for the Gospel and zeal becoming a staunch defender of Christian monotheism against the paganism that prevailed at the principal temple in his district (to the god Artemis).
Nicholas was imprisoned during the persecution of Christians under the Roman emperor Diocletian, savagely beaten, and later released under Constantine's Edict of Milan (313 A.D.). Those who survived Diocletian's purges were called "confessors" because they wouldn't renege on their confession of Jesus as Lord.
When Bishop Nicholas walked out of the prison, the crowds called to him: "Nicholas! Confessor!" He had been repeatedly beaten until he was raw, and his body was covered with deep bruises.
Bishop Nicholas was said to have intervened on behalf of unjustly charged prisoners and actively sought to help his people survive when they had experienced two successive bad harvests.
There was a widespread belief in those days, promoted by a theologian named Arias, that Jesus was actually a created being, like angels, and not divine. The Council of Nicea was convened in 325 A.D to settle this dispute, and the Nicene creed, recited today in many Christian worship services, was formulated to affirm the traditional teaching about Jesus' deity and preexistence.
Arias was himself at the council and the story goes that Nicholas and Arias got into such a heated dispute that punches were actually thrown. This may be a legendary accretion, but whether it is or not, it certainly seems inconsistent with our normal image of jolly old St. Nick.
In any case, the actual story of St. Nicholas (Say Saint Nicholas quickly with a European accent and you'll understand how we got the name Santa Claus) is a lot different, and much more interesting, than the popular modern mythology surrounding him.
