Why do people shorten Christmas to XMAS?

Why do people shorten Christmas to XMAS?

Q. Why do people shorten Christmas to Xmas? Jesus doesn't cut us short so why do we cut him short? I find it hard to believe that anyone that cuts his name short respects him like they say they do.

A. You're right. Christ doesn't cut us short, and for that we must be thankful. But changing Christmas to Xmas, for me, is not cutting him short. I'll explain in a moment.

Before I do, however, let's go back fifty years when the idea seems to have first caught on. The Greek for Christ is Χριστός (Strong's Concordance Number #5547), or Christos, pronounced khris-tos. In Greek, therefore, X does not cut Christ short, but is a distinct part of his name.

Merchants realized they could shave their advertising costs by using X, since it took less space than Christ, but after a few years the religious community countered with the slogan, "Let's put Christ back into Xmas." Generally they succeeded, especially since modern advertising layouts don't depend on the number of letters in a word.

But, as I said, changing Christmas to Xmas, for me, is not cutting Jesus short. In this I speak for thousands of Christians who realize Christ NEVER WAS in Christmas, especially since the holiday uses sex symbols to commemorate his birth.

"Wait a minute!" you say. "What sex symbols?"

This should not be surprising to you, since every year we're reminded by the media and clergy that Jesus was not born on December 25, although most claim there is no way to know when he was born. So they accept a festival brought into the Roman church – not the biblical church at Rome – by converts from pre-Christian paganism. To keep them from returning to their old ways, and thus losing membership and money, the Roman church adopted the festival, stripped it of its not-so-Christian activities, and called it the mass of Christ: Christmas. They retained the mid-winter date, and kept many of the sex symbols of the old festival of the Roman god Saturn.

You likely hang many of them on your tree each year. Those pretty balls represent the female egg; the candles represent the erect male generative organ; and the wreath comes from the female opening. Although it's not seen so frequently today, older wreaths had a candle standing upright within them. It's easy to imagine the representation.

What about the mistletoe of the Druids? It's amazing what permission a sprig of plastic can provide, from kissing the neighbor's wife to wherever that might lead, just as it did thousands of years ago.

The eternal God created sex as a beautiful event between a husband and wife. He never intended for it to be indulged in by unwed teens, or by men and women who are not married to each other. Yet this was the norm among worshippers of the Roman gods. Is it likely he would let his son be born amid such un-godly festivities? Dumb question.

The Bible, for those who truly study it, identifies the time of Jesus' birth as being in the early autumn, not in the dead of winter when the shepherds were gone from the fields, and the sheep were safe in the barns.

So, I repeat, changing Christmas to xmas, for me, is not cutting Jesus short, because Christ never was in Christmas in the first place.