MERRY CHRISTMAS!

To all those who come by here on this great day

And may all those who recognize Jesus as Lord always walk in his wisdom

Being a born pedagogue, I can't resist this occasion to offer a tiny bit of seasonal information: I realized only recently that many people do not understand why "Xmas" is sometimes used as a short form of "Christmas". Rather alarmingly, some people even seem to think that it is yet another attempt to take Christ out of Christmas. It is anything but. It in fact harks back to the earliest Christian times. The original New Testament documents were of course all written in the Greek language of the day and the name "Christos" (Christ) in Greek begins with the letter "Chi". And the Greek letter Chi looks just like a big Latin "X". So X is in fact the earliest symbol of the holy name and it was widely used as such by the early Christians of the Roman empire. So "Xmas" can in fact be seen as an acknowledgment of the early Christians.

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