I am not sure how many of you already know this, but I love Xmas… not just Christmas, but Xmas. I think we should all love Xmas.
You see, ink and parchment were expensive back in the days of the early church and for centuries afterward. The Greeks even invented the whole idea of capitals and small letters to get more use out of a parchment. They went even further and took away the spaces between the letters. You had to get the most out of a precious thing like parchment, and you had to make your ink last.
I often see Christians post statements like “Put Christ back in Xmas,” but that is kind of redundant. The X isn’t an EX, after all, but a CHI from the Greek alphabet. It is the symbol for Christ, a symbol of such shared meaning that it stood alone for the Savior. Out of the whole alphabet of 24 letters, Jesus gets one letter all to himself… Now that’s star power… no pun intended. Even cultural Icons like Cher, Sting, or Elvis need more label than a single letter.
Well, there was the short stint where the artist formerly known as Prince changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol, but that is, frankly, just kind of weird… and look how complicated it is.
Imagine how many trees we could save on the paper alone by using a single capital of universal recognition instead of the full word… think of the extra money we could have around in order to help the poor. You don’t want to destroy the environment do you? You don’t hate the poor do you?
So… Don’t be a Scrooge, celebrate Xmas this year.
