X marks the spot

Christmas is a taonga, a treasure for humankind. Some would say the treasure is hidden, buried under tinsel and decorations and obnoxious TV ads and fake Santas. Like all hidden gold, X marks the spot.

Some embattled Christians feel that ‘X’ is a conspiracy to take ‘Christ out of Christmas’. Yet the symbolism behind ‘Xmas’ has been deeply entrenched within Christianity since the days of the early church. In Greek, the word for Christ starts with an X, and was adopted by the earliest Christians. By the fourth century, the X became part of the official battle standard of the emperor Constantine—the first ruler to convert to Christianity.

With the invention of the printing press, X became a widely-known symbol for Christianity. ‘Xmas’, ‘Xian’ and ‘Xianity’ were popular abbreviations adopted by Christians. The X is a richly Christian symbol. It is a hidden treasure. X does indeed mark the spot!

But sometimes we’re so distracted by the details of the map that we fail to see the treasure. While we’re fighting the bandits of commercialism and secularism, we lose sight of Jesus. We do exactly what we criticise. But the treasures of Christmas are all around us. Jesus is hidden in plain sight.

In the Bible, Jesus’ disciple, John, tells the Christmas story in very different language: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.  Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all humanity (John 1:1-4).

The real Christmas story is that God reveals his true self through Jesus Christ. Jesus is not only the creator, but the fulfilment of all he created. Everything has been ‘Christed’ into being, and is restored by Christ. Jesus belongs to all humanity. He is the righter of all wrongs. He is the light that penetrates all darkness. Jesus is the ‘the fullness of him who fills everything in every way’ (Galatians 1:23).

Jesus is expansive and deep and wide. The truth is that Christmas does not belong to Christians. Christmas belongs to all humanity. We know the origins of the festival are a mish-mash of the pagan and mythical. And followers of Jesus do what they have always done, bringing the Christ-spark to these rituals.

So we need not battle the humanness of our Christmas festival. Instead, we want to bring out the Christ-light within it. Whether this means reclaiming the generosity expressed in gift-giving, the worship we give at the scene of the nativity, or even the joy we find in a jolly, red, mythical figure. It means expanding our viewpoint so that we see Christ where we did not see him before, allowing his light to penetrate the darkness.

We need simply to find the treasure that is hidden in the map. It is marked with an X.

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by Ingrid Barratt (c) 'War Cry' magazine, Christmas 2015, pp 3.
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