The immediate past Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, Professor J.O.Y. Mante has explained that there is nothing wrong in writing or pronouncing “Christmas” as “Xmas.” He said using ‘Xmas’ over ‘Christmas’ was not blasphemous as being touted by some people.
There is a misinformation in the public domain, gaining a recent attention especially on social media that, “X” is related to evil or was blasphemous and therefore Christians should not refer to Christmas in that way.
Delivering a Christmas Day sermon at the Trinity United Church at Mempeasem in Accra on Monday morning [Dec 25, 2023], Very Rev Professor Mante said there was nothing wrong with that and there was no truth that it has any relation to evil or blasphemy.
“Today we have come to celebrate as I have said, the birth of Jesus Christ, he is not born today oo!, we are celebrating his birthday. Nobody knows when he was born. We have created this day for him for a long time and we celebrate it.”
“Recently somebody sent me a WhatsApp message that he has gotten a message that we should never say ‘Xmas‘ because the ‘X‘ is something evil and that we should say ‘Christmas’. It was a school [WhatsApp] page so I had to immediately go unto the page to correct the notion,” Prof Mante said.
“Please I beg you, there is nothing wrong with it. It is just that when we say ‘Christmas‘, the ‘Ch‘ in the Greek, it is ‘X‘ that is all.
And that is why Christians all along will use the letter ‘X‘ to represent ‘Christ‘.
Prof Mante said contrary to the notion and in Christian belief, the symbol ‘X‘ does not technically take ‘Christ’ out of ‘Christmas’.
There is a long tradition of the letter ‘X‘ being an abbreviation for Jesus’ name, he added and said it evolved from the Greek language and the historical church’s frequent use of symbols.
He said there is a long and sacred history of the use of ‘X‘ to symbolize the name of Christ, and from its origin it has meant no disrespect.
“Jesus was not born into an English world, he was born into a world where they spoke Greek and Latin. If we understand that it will be helpful for us,” he added.
Source: GraphicOnline
