Xmas, Christmas, and more

During the holiday season it is common to hear some people say, “We need to put Christ back in Xmas,” bemoaning how our increasingly secular society has drifted away from the religious meaning of Christmas. They have a point certainly, given how we engage in a manic orgy of shopping beginning with Black Friday, which has nothing to do with the birth of Jesus. It is ironic, however, that they object to the use of Xmas because theologians and religious leaders have used that term for Christmas for hundreds of years. It came into use because the X comes from the Greek letter chi which is the first letter of Χριστος, the word for Christ in Koine Greek, the original language of the New Testament.

My point is not etymological, however. I think that rather than obsessing about putting Christ back in the word Christmas, it would be a better idea to put Christ back into Christianity itself. By that I mean those who claim to be Christians should act in ways that reflect the teachings of Jesus, for example to follow the universal message from the Sermon on the Mount, “Treat others as you would have them treat you.” The rest of the Sermon lays out some specifics: blessed are the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, they that mourn, and so on.

Although I am not a Christian, I don’t want to appear to be criticizing Christians in general because many are kind people who strive to live in a way that reflects the message of Jesus. Rather, I am calling out the Pseudo-Christians, the hypocrites and grifters who intentionally do harm to others while hiding their actions under a whitewash of upstanding morality based on their faith. In “The Devil’s Dictionary,” that old rascal and cynic Ambrose Bierce defined this sort of Christian as “One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.”

News stories abound about these Pseudo-Christians. Several recent accounts have been about people using their Christian belief as a reason to discriminate against gays and lesbians—the bakers who refused to make them wedding cakes and the court clerks who denied marriage licenses to them. When I hear people citing the Bible in support of their opposition to gay rights, I’m reminded that the same twisted thinking was used a century and a half ago to justify slavery. Jefferson Davis was a devout Episcopalian as was Leonidas Polk (for whom Fort Polk was named) who was not only a a bishop in the church but a famous Confederate general as well.

A similar sort of oily hypocrisy is especially common among some current politicians and religious leaders, particularly so-call “conservatives.” Anyone who reads newspapers regularly is familiar with their bloviating and grandstanding. A perennial example of this sort of showboating is the sorry group of politicians and their ecclesiastical allies who want to put the Ten Commandments in court houses, state capitols, and other public places (ah, yes, Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court). I like Kurt Vonnegut’s comment on this sort of religious demagoguery. In his collection of essays, “A Man without a Country,” he writes, “For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But often, with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. “Blessed are the merciful” in a courtroom? “Blessed are the peacemakers’ in the Pentagon? Give me a break!”

Christian hypocrites are an easy target, as are their ilk from other faiths. The bigger threat, however, comes from religious fanatics who know the Truth and whose absolutist tribalism causes them to harm others who have different religious identities. All religious sects produce fanatics like that: Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, and even Christian. Their evil alchemy transforms the Golden Rule into some kind of poison.

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