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Xmas (or Festivus for the rest of us)

PostHeaderIcon Xmas (or Festivus for the rest of us)

labarumI meant to make this my Xmas post, but hey, I’m a procrastinator.  Bite me!

Anyway, I recently read the CNN commentary “You can’t take Christ out of Christmas” by a certain Roland S. Martin. You can read it here:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/12/20/roland.martin/index.html

Somewhere in the article Mr. Martin tells us:

And I’m sorry, forget X-M-A-S. Malcolm X? Yes. X replacing Christ? No. 

I immediately decided to write a post about this in order to clarify this misconception to ignorant people like Mr. Martin. Share knowledge and educate .. you know.

But before I get to XMAS and the origin of the word, I must confess that I was somewhat surprised that an obvious deeply religious man like Mr. Martin can be so ignorant concerning ages old habits and traditions of his own religion. After reading such a grand blooper, I wondered who IS this Mr. Martin? Forunately, the footnotes in his article shed some some light on this question:

Roland S. Martin is a nationally award-winning journalist and CNN contributor. Martin is studying to receive his master’s degree in Christian communications at Louisiana Baptist University, and he is the author of “Listening to the Spirit Within: 50 Perspectives on Faith.”

I admit, I had no clue what “Christian Communications” meant. So I looked it up: you can get an idea here:

http://www.gotquestions.org/Christian-communication.html

I guess the command “Be kind to one another – Ephesians 4:32” sums it all up nicely. And in that respect, I fear that Mr. Martin, in calling people “idiots” and their different views “ridiculous” and “pathetic”, still has a looooong way to go in his studies.

I can’t resist quoting a few more gems from this article. Says Mr. Martin:

What the heck are “Seasons Greetings”? Can someone tell me what season we are greeting folks about? 

Then a bit later he answers his own question by the befuddling:

we should continue to remember that Jesus is the reason for the season.

Thereby a) acknowledging that he DOES know what season we’re greeting and b) acknowledging his ignorance concerning the REAL reason for the seasons (the Earth’s axis being tilted to its orbital plane).

Here’s another curious remark:

Don’t get me wrong; I’m very respectful of other religions.

A rather non-Christian attitude! The Bible is less respectful of other religions (Deuteronomy 13:6-10). And I won’t even mention the Inquisition.

And when Mr. Martin said:

we shouldn’t dismiss Muslims when the annual pilgrimage to Mecca is held during December. In fact, Americans are so ignorant of other faiths..

Speaking of “ignorant of other faiths”: I wonder if Mr. Martin is aware of the fact that the annual pilgrimage to Mecca is not necessarily always in December. But what IS clear, is that Mr. Martin is ignorant of certain aspects of even his OWN faith, which brings us back to his nonsensical remark about the word Xmas.

I won’t touch on the mystifying reference to Malcolm X (which is, to adopt Mr. Martin’s Christian Communications writing style, “so ridiculous that it’s pathetic”). I only would like to explain that the X in Xmas, contrary to what Mr. Martin seems to believe, does NOT stand for ‘crossing out Christ from Christmas’. To abbreviate ‘Christ’ by the letter X is a centuries old CHRISTIAN tradition and is based on the Greek spelling of “Christ”. This ages old symbol for Christ(usually depicted as a combination of an X and P) is known as Labarum. In modern typesetting, the P is now often dropped and just the X remains. But it is STILL a thoroughly Christian (Xian!) symbol and tradition.

It’s ironic that Mr. Martin is now discarding part of his own Christian heritage, solely based on a religious ignorance that he so easily accuses other Americans of.

Mr. Martin… here are some simple research tips for you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xmas:

In ancient Christian art, X and XP are abbreviations for Christ’s name. In many manuscripts of the New Testament and icons, X is an abbreviation for Christos ..

http://www.christmaspast.info/forums/Main01/messages/647932485.html

The scribes who copied New Testament manuscripts had no intention of taking Christ out of the New Testament. They used the abbreviation simply to save time and space. …

http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/xmasabbr.asp

Oh, and yes, I DO know that Xmas is a holiday that got hijacked by Christianity from a much older Pagan tradition and that it’s based on celebrating the winter solstice (in the Northern hemisphere), but I fear that would be too advanced a topic for Mr. Martin.

See for instance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas#Pre-Christian_origins

In part, the Christmas celebration was created by the early Church in order to entice pagan Romans to convert to Christianity without losing their own winter celebrations


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6 Responses to “Xmas (or Festivus for the rest of us)”

  • deannie says:

    And so, as it turns out, Christ really is NOT the reason for the ‘season’, is he? Which more pointedly begs the question: Should those people who want to genuinely follow in Christ’s foot steps actually celebrate Christmas? It is very interesting that there is no record of Jesus Christ ever celebrating his own birthday or making this a requirement of his disciples.

    Jesus did however make it clear that they were to remember that last supper and its meaning for all foot step followers as stated at 1 Cor 11:23-26 “For I received from the Lord that which I also handed on to YOU, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which he was going to be handed over took a loaf and, after giving thanks, he broke it and said: “This means my body which is in YOUR behalf. Keep doing this in remembrance of me.” He did likewise respecting the cup also, after he had the evening meal, saying: “This cup means the new covenant by virtue of my blood. Keep doing this, as often as YOU drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as YOU eat this loaf and drink this cup, YOU keep proclaiming the death of the Lord, until he arrives.”

  • injun says:

    Glad to see you’re not the only one making these observations, look at the man’s own blog: http://www.rolandsmartin.com/blog/?p=118#comments

  • Paul says:

    @Deannie, regarding the question “should those people who want to genuinely follow in Christ’s foot steps actually celebrate Christmas?”

    Their creed does not mandate they do.
    Do I have a problem with Christians celebrating Christmas? Not in the least!
    As long as they remember that this time of year is celebrated by many other people of different creeds for a variety of reasons. To each his own. While you may appreciate the gesture, you’d probably feel a bit akward when a Jewish person wishes you a “Happy Hanukkah”, and that same person would probably frown upon being wished a Happy celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. This is not so hard to understand. Then, why is it such a huge problem for people like Mr. Martin, to wish people whose religious affiliation is unknown to them, ‘Happy Holidays’? It simply avoids offending people.
    So what I DO have a HUGE problem with is the extreme ignorance (if not arrogance) of, especially Christian, people like Mr. Martin, who insist on, basically, wishing Jewish people a ‘Happy Christmas’ and call people who are more sensitive towards other people’s beliefs ‘idiots’. This last word coming from the same Mr. Martin who calls himself “very respectful of other religions”.
    What is needed here is some simple education.
    No, ‘Christ’ is not the reason for the season. The season (solstice) if the reason for many kinds of celebrations. Christmas is just one of them, and to demand that YOUR celebration should trump all others is ignorant, arrogant and disrespectful. It’s also undemocratic, and therefore un-American.
    I respectfully wish my Christian friends a Merry Christmas, may I ask them to return the favor and wish me .. oh well, a Happy Festivus, I quess, would do nicely… and when in doubt, ‘Happy Holidays’ always sounds nice.
    (which could get you labeled an ‘idiot’ by Mr. Martin, but that defines him, not you. And we must hope that such rudeness will vanish, once Mr. Martin catches up on his study for a Master’s in Christian Communications)

    As for 1 Cor 11:23-26 .. let’s keep THAT discussion till next Easter. One celebration at a time. 😉

  • Paul says:

    @Injun: “look at the man’s own blog”

    I’d rather not.
    Do I really have to?
    Oh well, I’ll give it a shot.

  • Paul says:

    Oh, and when you, respectfully, wish someone a ‘Happy Celebration-that-you’re-not-really-familiar-with’ .. make sure not to make painful mistakes, like the Japanese department store some decades ago, that tried to appeal to the upcomig ‘westernization’ trend by displaying a huge red and white-bearded Santa Claus … snugly nailed to a cross.

  • Paul says:

    @Injun, Okay, read the comments at the man’s blog.
    Just what I expected: some level-headed folks calmly pointing at the facts of history and a lot of folks fighting over the honor of being the most ignorant, like the guy blaming political correctness on people who are too easily offended. While I agree that people are way too easily offended, he seems to ignore the fact that the article he is aplauding was written by a man who feels deeply offended by politically correct ‘idiots’.
    So now we have a situation where people are deeply offended by people who try not to offend people.
    One can never win…

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