Top 3 Signs You May Be Missing the Christmas Spirit

#3: You begin a Facebook status post with the phrase, "Come on People..." or "Hey People..." when wanting to make a point.  It has the same ring as when the Prodigal's brother said to his dad, "this son of yours."  It makes the relationships of life seem so distant and finger pointing.

#2: You get all bent out of shape when someone writes "X-Mas" instead of Christmas.  While I too am an advocate for keeping Christ in Christmas, the fact remains that the original term X-Mas was created with just as much spiritual significance than the original phrase Merry Christmas.  In fact, do a study on the letter X in Greek to find out how silly you've been making war out of a non-war issue.  By the way if it was an issue worth getting upset about, then shouldn't we be all excited and "victorious" when we drive down the road and see a yellow sign with the words "PED X-ING?"  Don't we interpret that as "Pedestrian Crossing?"  Hey! The word "cross" in a secular sign!!!

#1:  You can't stand to hear someone say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas."  There are a lot of ways to say, "hello", "I love you" and "no thank you."  Same goes for wishing someone joy during this season. I've never heard someone use the term Happy Holidays to blatantly slam someones faith in Christ or to shun that person. (not that it doesn't happen) It's just we live in a society where 83% don't go to a church and/or don't have a Christian background.  So to most, saying Happy Holiday is as natural as saying Happy Birthday. I'm reminded of the words, "they will know we are Christians by our love."  There are Biblical convictions and personal values.  Don't die on the mountain of personal values and lose the opportunity to one day talk about Biblical convictions to someone.




P.S  There is another, it's called "You write me several paragraphs on explaining why you do any of the above mentioned and why I'm wrong."  Which in term just proves my point.

Merry Christmas

A very special Merry Christmas from our family to yours.
The Farrell Family




There would have never been a purpose for the cross without the reason for the manger.

Christmas Chaos

The word "Christ" and its compounds, including "Christmas", have been abbreviated in English for at least the past 1,000 years, long before the modern "Xmas" was commonly used. "Christ" was often written as "XP" or "Xt"; there are references in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as far back as AD 1021. This X and P arose as the uppercase forms of the Greek letters χ and ρ used in ancient abbreviations for Χριστος (Greek for "Christ"), and are still widely seen in many Eastern Orthodox icons depicting Jesus Christ. The labarum, an amalgamation of the two Greek letters rendered as ☧, is a symbol often used to represent Christ in Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christian Churches.

The labarum, often called the Chi-Rho, is a Christian symbol representing Christ.

The occasionally held belief that the "X" represents the cross on which Christ was crucified also has no basis in fact. St Andrew's Cross is X-shaped, but Christ's cross was probably shaped like a T or a †.

Indeed, X-as-chi was associated with Christ long before X-as-cross could be, since the cross as a Christian symbol developed later. (The Greek letter Chi Χ stood for "Christ" in the ancient Greek acrostic ΙΧΘΥΣ ichthys.) While some see the spelling of Christmas as Xmas a threat, others see it as a way to honor the martyrs. The use of X as an abbreviation for "cross" in modern abbreviated writing (e.g. "King's X" for "King's Cross") may have reinforced this assumption.

In ancient Christian art, χ and χρ are abbreviations for Christ's name.^[9] In many manuscripts of the New Testament and icons, X is an abbreviation for Christos, as is XC (the first and last letters in Greek, using the lunate sigma); compare IC for Jesus in Greek.

(The above was taken directly from Wikipedia, and can be viewed in it's fullness here)

This is not a plea that we should all love and enjoy seeing XMAS instead of Christmas on signs or in print. Because, yes, we live in a culture where "XMAS" is thought of as "taking Christ out of Christmas."
If you are like me, you were told that from a Christian who was told that by a Christian.
But the reality is--that is simply not true.

This post is simply meant to spark a thought in your mind about how to react towards people who don't believe the same thing as you.

I know plenty of well meaning and good hearted Christians who get all up in arms when they see an "X" in place of Christmas or hear "Happy Holidays" instead of Merry Christmas.
I quickly think of the story of Uzzah. (2 Samuel 6:4-7)
God gave instruction for no one to touch the Ark, the priest of Israel are following it back to Jerusalem pulled by ox and it hits a pothole and the Ark starts to fall off the cart, Uzzah reaches up to catch it and is struck dead by God.
??????

Can you hear that conversation in Heaven?
Uzzah---Um, God? Hey, I was just trying to help....did you see what was about to happen?
God--- I did. But Uzzah, I don't need your help. I can take care of it.
Uzzah---Good point, God. So it would have been better for me to not catch the Ark and let it crash, huh.
God---Yep.
Uzzah---I don't know what I was thinking, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

You get the point.

This Christmas lets have a little less chaos by not trying to "help" God out by defending things that really don't matter.
I've discovered the world already knows what we stand against; we typically shout those out pretty loud.
Let's show them the things we are for.

Merry Christmas!