Christmas Tags

According to Wikipedia:

Christmas is an annual holiday that celebrates the birth of Jesus. The date of the celebration is traditional, and is not considered to be his actual date of birth. Christmas festivities often combine the commemoration of Jesus' birth with various secular customs, many of which have been influenced by earlier winter festivals.

The word Christmas originated as a contraction of "Christ's mass". It is derived from the Middle English Christemasse and Old English Cristes mæsse, a phrase first recorded in 1038, compounded from Old English derivatives of the Greek christos and the Latin missa. In early Greek versions of the New Testament, the letter Χ (chi), is the first letter of Christ. Since the mid-16th century Χ, or the similar Roman letter X, was used as an abbreviation for Christ.  Hence, Xmas is often used as an abbreviation for Christmas.

St. Nickolas worshiped the Christ and was persecuted for it, but of course, consumer culture creates confusion about all that.  There's no confusion for us at our house about the reason for the season.  In fact if you're confused, this is probably a good time to link to one of my all-time favorite articles, Santa, Saved and Sanctified by Pastor Jack Hayford, Chancellor and Founder of The King's Institute and Seminary and President of the Foursquare Church.

Image:  Courtesy blogrodent.