Oh, my! Today’s alphabet block actually has two letters on
it, X and Y. X brings us Xmas and Y
shows us Yule and yearning.
Several times we’ve seen words that are in foreign
languages, Greek or Latin. Why are they important? Because our tradition as
Christians comes from a time when Greek and Latin were major languages spoken
across a wide area and by many people. If not their native tongue, Greek and
Latin were the languages of those who traveled to different parts of the Roman
Empire and the Middle East. They were the languages of commerce and conquest,
but also languages in which Christianity grew. Aramaic, the language Jesus
spoke, was common in his part of the Middle East, but in Rome or Alexandria or
Athens it would not have been understood. Much of our New Testament was written
in Greek and even the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek and handed
down to us. So during Advent we look at the gift of language and its place in
our heritage.
That brings us to Xmas. Many Christians cringe when they see
something with “Xmas” written on it. “You’ve taken Christ out of Christmas!”
they exclaim, usually fairly loudly. But looking at history and at language, it
can take on a whole different point of view. There is a letter in the Greek
alphabet that is called chi, and
pronounced like the sound of ch as in
loch. The actual letter for chi is χ, our mysterious X. So what’s it
doing in Xmas? For many years, it was considered cool to have a pin or a ring
with a monogram on it, initials that stood for a person’s name. Centuries ago
the church gave Jesus a monogram consisting of two letters, the X of chi and a Ρ (rho, sounding like r in rod) to stand for the first two letters of
the title he was given, Christ. The
symbol of chi and rho for Jesus’ monogram looks like a
long-tailed P with an X centered on the bottom stroke of the P. It’s often seen
in churches, as carvings, on hangings and paraments, vestments, and even on the
burse that is placed on top of the veil for the chalice and paten as they wait
to be filled for the Eucharist. So what does that have to do with Christmas?
The church often used and uses shorthand just as we do, and in Greek, the chi (X) symbol would recall the title of
Christ which shares the same initial sound. Coupled with the rho, the result is
the sound CHR – sounding more familiar? So when people use Xmas, they aren’t
necessarily being offensive and rubbing Christ out of Christmas; they may be
returning to an earlier version of the church and referring to Christ by his
monogram.
Around Christmas we often sing the carol “Deck the Halls.”
In it there is a line that says, “Troll the ancient Yuletide carol,” but what
are they talking about? Trolls? Those are either mythical characters or people
who stir up trouble on the internet, right? In this case to troll is to sing
with enthusiasm. But Yuletide carols? Yule
was an ancient word for a period of time that somewhat corresponded to the
period of midwinter. Later it was narrowed down to Christmas Day or what now
corresponds with the Christmas season until Epiphany. Benjamin Britten used the
term in his Ceremony of Carols in the
piece “Wolcom Yole.” Now it is usually used to indicate a nostalgia what we
think of as the way Christmas used to be celebrated in what the Oxford Dictionary
of English Folklore calls “. . . lavish food and secular jollity, situated in a
largely invented ‘Merrie England*.’ ” It
does serve to recall the past, even if a glorified fiction of that past.
In a sense, we have a yearning
for things that make us feel warm and safe. We yearn for a time when life
seemed uncomplicated. Perhaps that is why Yule conjures up images of music and
dancing, feasting, games of charades and elaborate costumed tableaux in period
books and movies. But beyond the yearning for those “Good Old Days,” which
might not have really been all that good, we can also yearn for a home where we
once lived or even a relationship that has been severed for some reason. Advent
invites us to deepen the relationship we have with God or perhaps the one we
have felt was lost. Perhaps now is the time to take the steps to change the
yearning into reality.
It is almost Christmas. It’s time to mend fences instead of
yearning for the ones we used to have. Whether we write it Xmas or Christmas,
we keep Christ in it. That’s the important thing.
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