Merry Christmas

[Keystone Phil]

With only a few days left until we celebrate Christmas, I thought it would be best if I took the time to wish everyone a Merry Christmas now. Most of us will be running around in the next week and might not find time to make it to the forum.

So Merry Christmas everyone and to all our Jewish friends on the forum, I hope you guys enjoyed the holiday with your family and friends. To everyone else who might not be celebrating Christmas or Hanukah, I hope you can enjoy the holiday season as well.


Have a Blessed Christmas

[Keystone Phil]

Yea, happy XMas everyone

Ugh...it's Christmas, Bono!

Sometimes I think people just purposely try to get me angry... 

[Keystone Phil]

Actually X-Mas is a correct way of spelling Christmas. The "X" is from Greek and it was spelled that way originally.

It's not being used as "a correct way of spelling Christmas" States. You know that.

[Keystone Phil]

The word "Christ" is substituted with an "X." Now you mean to tell me that people just type or write "Merry XMas" because it's shorter and they don't actually say it? What about that person who says "Merry XMas?" If you think that everyone that says that is just doing it because it's shorter than that showes a lack of common sense.

It is a frickin legitimate way of putting it, let us see what wikipedia says:

Xmas is an abbreviation for Christmas. It is derived from the word ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ, transliterated as Christos, which is Greek for Christ. Greek is the language in which the whole New Testament was written.

Originally, Xmas was an abbreviation where the X represents the Greek letter chi, with a hard ch, which is the first letter of Christ's name in Greek. However, because of the modern interpretations of the letter X, many people are unaware of this and assume that this abbreviation is meant to drop Christ from Christmas. The occasionally seen belief that the X represents the cross Christ was crucified on has no basis in fact; St Andrew's Cross is X-shaped, but Christ's cross was T-shaped. Indeed, X-as-chi was associated with Christ long before X-as-cross could be. The use of X as an abbreviation for cross in modern parlance may have reinforced this assumption.

In ancient Christian art X and XR (Chi Ro--the first two letters in Greek of Christos) abbreviate Christ's name. In many manuscripts of the New Testament, X abbreviates Christos (Xristos). The Oxford English Dictionary documents the use of this abbreviation back to 1551, fifty years before the first English colonists came to America and sixty years earlier than the completion of the King James Version of the Bible. At the same time, Xian and Xianity were in frequent use as abbreviations of Christian and Christianity.

You're still totally missing my point and how amusing...eveyone here defending what you said is totally ignoring opedo's statement. Dislike for the fact that Christ's birthday being celebrated on this day is why Xmas was started. Your average person says it to be ignorant. Now what would happen if I mocked another's faith? I'd be just another intolerant conservative, right? That's exactly what others are doing when they say Xmas. That's why you don't want "Christmas" trees but "Holiday" trees. That's why a Mayor of some city (forget which one) had to apologize for saying "Christmas party." Certain people in this country want to do away with Christ in this season.

Now I ask that we keep the argument down here. This was meant to spread good feelings for the holidays. I took offense to the "Merry Xmas" because opedo, who suggests that Christians should be fed to lions and makes his hate for Christianity known, did it to mock this celebration. And what I love about each and every one of you is that you'd be the first to jump down a conservative's throat if they said anything of the sort about a different religion.

[Keystone Phil]

And I hope Phil has a happy "calming" period away from the forum this next week.

Oh I don't need to calm down. I'm fine 

Anyway, I'm not going anywhere. It's just that I'll be busy so won't be on as much as usual.

[Keystone Phil]

happy 25th of December for our Atheist, Agnostic and Deist friends.

I still celebrate Christmas anyway, even though I'm a Deist.  Even if Jesus wasn't the Son of God, he still was one of the nicest guys around, and that's good enough for me to honor him.

You are one classy guy, Gabu.

[Keystone Phil]

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Sorry JFK but if you think people use Xmas because of your historical information, you're wrong and so is States.

[Keystone Phil]

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Sorry JFK but if you think people use Xmas because of your historical information, you're wrong and so is States.

My point is, it has been around a long time so people invariably say it, some people may now say it as they don't wish to say Christ but I doubt that accounts for all of them.

My point is that most people say it because they don't want to have Christ is Christmas. They aren't walking around saying it because of the historical information you provided. They aren't brought up thinking the holiday's name is "Xmas." They know the name for the holiday. Most people that go around saying "Merry Xmas" are doing it purposely because they don't have respect for the religious meaning.