"Be sure to keep the X in Xmas!"

No one has to remind anyone
to feast and party in this season that,
not so many years ago, was given over
to Christian worship.

"Keep the X in Xmas!"
they cry!
 

It does sound like a battle-cry sprung
from the mind of some atheist intent on
eradicating Christ from public life.

But the truth is different
. . . and Christian . . .
because from the earliest days
of the Christian era the Greek letters Χρ (chi ro)
were used as a pious abbreviation for Kristos,
the name of Christ in Greek:

Χριστός

*
And, for more than a thousand years,
Χ (chi) has been used
by itself to stand for Christ.

Christ's Mass needs to be
the centerpiece of every Christmas

. . . but making it so
grows harder every day.

 In Manchester,NH,  the life-sized crèche has
long been banned from Veterans Park, and
last week's "Winter Concert" at the high-school
sang of sleigh bells and snowflakes,
but there was nary a word of Jesus.

*

These Christmas revelers?

Don't chide them.

They're celebrating the only thing they know.

 Folks who don't know Jesus
are able to party, feast, and trade gifts
at Christmastime, but we can't expect them
to celebrate Christ's birth.

To  "keep the X in Xmas" ---
you and I have to become like St. Paul.

We've got to preach Christ in season and out
. . . literally.

As St. Paul showed the skeptical Athenians
that Christ is the unknown God that they
honored in their temples, so we've got to show
our fellow citizens that Jesus
--- the God unknown to them ---
is really the X they want us
to keep in Xmas.

We've got to help them come to
know Jesus as we know Him:
not in the clink of glasses at the office party,
not in Santa hats and the blare of music,
but in the depths of the soul, quietly,
prayerfully, like Mary and Joseph.

When that day comes
--- and not a moment before ---
will our people "keep the X in Xmas."

 
*
 The Child He sent to be born among us,
and to save us: the Child who, at Christmastime,
we are called to kneel before and to adore.

 MERRY XMAS TO ALL