Yadkin Valley Trickles

The Significance of X

I was spending my first Christmas in Japan and, in the multitude of all the hustling and bustling of gift shoppers in downtown Tokyo, I felt insignificant.

Up in lights along the Ginza were signs in English in celebration of the Holiday Season, but in the places where Christ was supposed to be there were big X’s.

“Merry Xmas!”

In the whole population of Japan, I knew, the number of Christians was less than one-tenth of one percent.

“They are celebrating the season without a reason,” I said to myself.

“They think they are leaving Christ out.”

I knew better.

I thought of my Aunt Weeta.

When Aunt Weeta signed her holiday cards, she always wrote... just above her name:

“Merry Xmas!”

“Xmas is not leaving Christ out,” she used to tell me, “it’s keeping Him in in a special way.”

X, she said, is the first letter in the Greek word for Christ, and it has been a holy symbol since the time of the early church.

Today, when knowledge of ancient Greek is limited mostly to ministers and theologians who studied the language to meet a requirement, there are many Christians in America who earnestly believe that using the word Xmas is just a way to take Christ out of Christmas.

I am glad my Aunt Weeta taught me differently.