Christmas Cards Old and New

Some years I just throw them out--and then feel guilty for doing that--but this year I hung up a string across our living room to hold all the lovely Christmas cards we received from family and friends. And then, a few days ago, I added a second string because the first one was full.

Some of the cards are silly--smiling snowmen, grimacing gingerbread men. Some of the cards are serious--creches, stars, and wise men. About half of them are photos of friends from far away.

The history of the Christmas card goes back to the Victorian era. The BBC has an interesting article on Christmas traditions that originated during this time period and has this to say about the cards:

In 1843 Henry Cole commissioned an artist to design a card for Christmas. The illustration showed a group of people around a dinner table and a Christmas message. At one shilling each, these were pricey for ordinary Victorians and so were not immediately accessible. However the sentiment caught on and many children - Queen Victoria's included – were encouraged to make their own Christmas cards. In this age of industrialisation colour printing technology quickly became more advanced, causing the price of card production to drop significantly. Together with the introduction of the halfpenny postage rate, the Christmas card industry took off. By the 1880s the sending of cards had become hugely popular, creating a lucrative industry that produced 11.5 million cards in 1880 alone. The commercialisation of Christmas was well on its way.

The oldest Christmas card -- only 10 survive today
of the original printing of 1000 cards.

Nowadays Christmas cards are hugely popular--one estimate says that there are 1.9 billion Christmas cards sent annually.

This year was a lean year for us, and as much as I love doing it, we weren't able to have cards printed to mail to friends and family. But despite that, I was able to put together a digital version of a Victorian tradition and share it with family and friends via e-mail and Facebook.

Merry Christmas to all!

Putting the "X" back in "Christ"mas

Sometime in the misty days of childhood memory, I acquired the certainty that the abbreviation "Xmas" was bad, vile, and wrong--a pagan plot to cross "Christ" out of Christmas. It took many years for that childhood certainty to be dispelled, and many years after that before I felt comfortable using the abbreviation myself. Just like me in my younger days, many Christians I know get unnecessarily offended by "Xmas." But by getting into a huff about this abbreviation, we betray a lamentable ignorance about our own history, the history of the Church.

To defend the use of Xmas, the first thing I must explain is that "X" is the Greek letter "chi," and "chi" is the first letter in the Greek word christos, meaning Christ. From the earliest days of the Church, "X" has been used as an abbreviation for Christ. During the days of Roman persecution, Christians used the symbol of the fish to identify themselves to each other because ichthus, the Greek word for fish, was an acronym for their beliefs.

I=Iesus
CH=Christos
TH=Theou
U=Uios
S=Soter

In English, the phrase reads, "Jesus Christ, God's Son, Savior." Note that the CH in ichthus (an English transliteration of the Greek word) would have been represented by an "X," the Greek letter "chi," in the original word. This is the earliest example of "X" being used as an abbreviation for Christ.

Once Constantine issued the Edict of Milan in AD 313 and ended the persecutions, Christians no longer needed to use the secret fish symbol; however, another symbol involving the abbreviation for Christ became prevalent at this time. The common story of Constantine's conversion, immediately prior to the Battle of Milvian Bridge, is taken from Eusebius.

He said that about noon, when the day was already beginning to decline, he saw with his own eyes the trophy of a cross of light in the heavens, above the sun, and bearing the inscription, CONQUER BY THIS. At this sight he himself was struck with amazement, and his whole army also, which followed him on this expedition, and witnessed the miracle.

Interestingly enough, there is another version of this story told by Lactantius. This chronicler records that the sign Constantine saw in the sky before his victory was, not the cross, but the symbol of a Chi-Rho (XP), the first two letters of Christ's name. Lactantius goes on to say this:

Constantine was directed in a dream to cause the heavenly sign to be delineated on the shields of his soldiers, and so to proceed to battle. He did as he had been commanded, and he marked on their shields the letter Χ, with a perpendicular line drawn through it and turned round thus at the top, being the cipher of CHRIST. Having this sign (ΧР ), his troops stood to arms. 

Constantine later ordered the symbol of the Chi-Rho (also called the labarum) to be used on all his military insignia since he was convinced that Christ had caused him to win the battle. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Chi-Rho continued to be used as a symbol by the Byzantines although it fell out of use in the West.

What did not perish in the West was an understanding that "X" was a perfectly appropriate abbreviation for the word Christ, and this understanding continued into the High Middle Ages and Reformation. In his article "The Origin of 'Xmas,'" Dennis Bratcher writes:

[B]y the fifteenth century Xmas emerged as a widely used symbol for Christmas. In 1436 Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press with moveable type. In the early days of printing typesetting was done by hand and was very tedious and expensive. As a result, abbreviations were common. In religious publications, the church began to use the abbreviation C for the word "Christ" to cut down on the cost of the books and pamphlets. From there, the abbreviation moved into general use in newspapers and other publications, and "Xmas" became an accepted way of printing "Christmas" (along with the abbreviations Xian and Xianity). Even Webster’s dictionary acknowledges that the abbreviation Xmas was in common use by the middle of the sixteenth century.

Xmas was used because it was more economical, not out of disrespect for Christ or a desire to remove His name from the holiday. Anyone seeing the word "Xmas" knew enough to pronounce it "Christmas" (not "exmas") because they understood the "X" properly, an abbreviation for the word "Christ."

Dennis Bratcher sums up the issue well in the conclusion to his article:

So there is no grand scheme to dilute Christianity by promoting the use of Xmas instead of Christmas. It is not a modern invention to try to convert Christmas into a secular day, nor is it a device to promote the commercialism of the holiday season. Its origin is thoroughly rooted in the heritage of the Church.... Understanding this use of Christian symbolism might help us modern day Xians focus on more important issues of the Faith during Advent, and bring a little more Peace to the Xmas Season.

That Was Then, This is Now

The evil "Nimrod Bush" (precursor to the Christmas Tree?)

I recently read an article entitled "The True Origin of Christmas" which asked this question: Can Christ be honored by Christmas? The author's answer was downright inflammatory. "Keeping Christmas dishonors Christ! He considers everything about it to be an abomination!"

The author went on to explain how the festival of Christmas developed from pagan holidays, specifically the Roman festival of Saturnalia, and was later appropriated by the Church. Using questionable historiographical methods, the author also tied the celebration of Christmas to Nimrod, child-sacrifice, cannibalism, and fertility cults. He revealed the nefarious origins of the Christmas tree and noted that the Bible condemns the celebration of birthdays.

Not many Christians are as extreme as this author in their opposition to Christmas; however, some Christians do refuse to celebrate it. In his article "The Menace of Chinese Food," James B. Jordan responds to this segment of Christianity by parodying its arguments against the holiday. Substituting the phrase "Chinese Food" for "Christmas," he shows the silly reasoning of those who object to Christmas because of its supposedly pagan beginnings. (Is it idolatrous to eat Chinese food simply because it was developed by members of an Eastern monistic religion?) Jordan argues that the historical origin of a thing in the past does not disqualify its use or observance in the present:

Arguments from history in this area are irrelevant, as well as erroneous. They are irrelevant because people do not observe Christmas with any view to its supposedly-pagan origins. The history of a word does not determine its present meaning, nor does the history of a custom determine its present meaning. People use the words “Saturday” and “Sunday” and “Monday” without any thought of the god Saturn or the sun or the moon. It would be preposterous to accuse people of idolatry simply because they use these words. Similarly, the only relevant question regarding Christmas is this: What does it mean to people now?

Maybe the festival of Christmas did develop from the Mesopotamian celebration of the New Year or from the Roman celebration of Saturnalia. So what? That was then, this is now. The Christ-child has come and cast down all principalities and powers. He has taken that day and made it into His day.  In past millennia, Marduk, Mithras, Kronos, and Saturn may have called the day their own, but I don't see their figurines in any nativity scenes now.

James B. Jordan goes on to show that the "original" pagan celebrations were simply twisted versions of symbols and celebrations that God had already established.  

All pagan feasting is a perverse replica of true Godly festivity. The pagan worship of the sun is a perversion of the Biblical analogy of the sun to Christ (Mal.4:2; Ps.19; etc.). The pagan recognition of the change in the year from dark to light, from death to life, at the Winter Solstice is but a perversion of the covenant truth found in the Noachic Covenant. What is wrong with reclaiming the Winter Solstice for Christ?

Approaching the topic from this angle, we can see that the pagans were the actual copycats (not the Church). God established the natural order (the sun, the seasons, etc.) to point to Christ, and fallen nations perverted what God had made in their own idolatrous festivals.

So, can Christ be honored by Christmas? Of course. It was His to begin with.