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Several times throughout the Christmas holidays we will see the words, “Merry Xmas” on signs, and though we know that sometimes people do it to save space or shorten the Word, it seems offensive to those of us who believe in Jesus Christ.\u00a0 Like many before us, we want “Christ” to say in “Christmas.”<\/p>\n
But Xmas is hardly a new concept and actually dates back to the earliest days of the Christian church.\u00a0 Quite a number of the initial followers of Jesus were Greek and their term for Christ’s name was “Xristos” (pronounced Christos).\u00a0 Along with the fish symbol, the X was used to denote churches and Christian gatherings and marked the places where they worshiped.\u00a0 The letter X is one of the oldest traditions of the Christian faith and was one of the first symbols that signified the Gospel message for all people of all races and backgrounds.<\/p>\n
Many of the converts to the faith were largely unschooled and these men and women would not have recognized their own names on a document, much less the name of Christ.\u00a0 Therefore, the symbols became an important part of faith all the way up through the Dark Ages, and the clergy taught that the letter X was a symbol of Christ, something easy to recognize for the common man.<\/p>\n
Though we realize today that the removal of “Christ” from Christmas can be disturbing, it is good to remember that there was a time when X was the ultimate statement of faith.\u00a0 If early Christians were transported through time to this day to see an Xmas sign, they would immediately understand the correlation with the Son of God and be convinced that our world was magnifying His name, not diminishing it.\u00a0 This is not to say that people don’t use Xmas as a way to removed the religious connotations of the holiday, but it is a reminder to us to see how things have changed.<\/p>\n
Have a Mighty Christmas!\u00a0 Celebrate the birth of our King!
\n~Love Pastor Bob<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
[\/spb_text_block]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[spb_text_block animation=”none” animation_delay=”0″ simplified_controls=”yes” custom_css_percentage=”no” padding_vertical=”0″ padding_horizontal=”0″ margin_vertical=”0″ custom_css=”margin-top: 0px;margin-bottom: 0px;” border_size=”0″ border_styling_global=”default” width=”1\/1″ el_position=”first last”] Several times throughout the Christmas holidays we will see the words, “Merry Xmas” on signs, and though we know that sometimes people do it to save space or shorten the Word, it seems offensive to those of us who believe in Jesus Christ.\u00a0 Like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[115],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pastors-word-for-the-week"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekerschapel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekerschapel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekerschapel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekerschapel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekerschapel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16001"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekerschapel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16004,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekerschapel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16001\/revisions\/16004"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekerschapel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekerschapel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekerschapel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekerschapel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}