Xmas

I ran onto this lil story from The Denver Post in Michelle Malkin's blog. Seems the city had banned all religious displays from the "Parade of Lights" (formerly Christmas parade). Some 1,000 folks protested the ban by gathering before the parade to sing hymns, etc. Steve Schweitzberger carried a basket with a tiny baby Jesus doll inside that had a paper teardrop falling from its eye. The baby came with a sign that read, "It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to." Schweitzberger said he thought the display was appropriate considering religious groups were not allowed to participate in the downtown Parade of Lights this weekend. "I thought it was strange that they would exclude the birthday boy from his own party," Schweitzberger said. "Everybody knows that Christmas is not spelled with an X." Sounds cute, eh? Cute and oh, so wrong. Baby in the basket with a paper "tear"—tacky. "Birthday boy"—his own (unintentional, unconscious?) way of belittling the Incarnation? And what's with the silly, "Everybody knows that Christmas is not spelled with an X."? Sure, the illiterati may think that the "X" in Xmas is the 24th letter of the English alphabet (if they can count that far). Anyone who's not a subliterate bufoon knows, though, that in Xmas, the X is the Greek letter "chi" and the first letter in Christ, as spelled in Greek. It's how we get the fish symbol for Christian, for heaven's sake! (The first letters in the phrase, Jesus Christ, God's Son, Savior were arranged to depict a fish.) So, even First Century Christians were using th X to symbolize Christ. Ya know, it's subliterates like Schweitzberger who uphold the image of Christians as illiterate redneck goofs. "Everybody knows that Christmas is not spelled with an X"? Well, I'm glad I'm not "everybody" then.