Merry Christmas or Merri Xmas, Holiday or Holy Day?

Merry Christmas or Merri Xmas. Just a thought came to my mind lately as I was reminded of the Midnight Mass homily delivered by our pastor at the Our Lady of Lourdes personal parish for the Filipino-Chinese Community of Tabaco City. Our pastor posed the question whether we are celebrating Christmas or Xmas. He explained the difference between the two. Many people in the secular world wants to celebrate Christmas without Christ. This is what is meant by Xmas = a Christmas without Christ. How sad that the joyous event intended to celebrate the birth of Christ ended up celebrating without the celebrant. We see how the world of commerce have been reaping the fruits of consumerism. The selfishness and the materialism associated with this. How sad too that many of us never realized that Christ was born in poverty. He was visited by the poor shepherds who were tendering the flocks in the fields of Bethlehem, while the rich and the famous were having their good times. It is sad to note that in many countries with a former Christian culture and where Christianity originally take root, that the display of the manger scene is banned on the false idea of inclusiveness. Inclusiveness is a secular value that puts religious practice into the private realm. Thus the ensuing result is that the temporal celebrations attached to the Holy day in order to enrich it is now the focal point of inclusive celebration while the cause of the celebration is now put into the sidelines. Now i pose the question: Does plurality means a denial of our authentic freedom to practice religion? If inclusiveness means the banning of public expression of religion, then secularism has become a religion in its own right and a tyrannical religion indeed.

A Roman Catholic High Mass, Netherlands, c.?

The House of Bread. In Arabic بيت لحم Bethlehem means the house of Lamb, while the Hebrew בית לחם and Greek Βηθλεέμ means the House of Bread [Wikipedia, Bethlehem]. This point is important in understanding the doctrinal significance of Christmas. The Lamb is symbolic of the Messiah. Because in the Old Testament the Lamb was used as the sacrificial animal symbolizing the deliverance of the Israelites from Pharaoh. In the New Testament Christ was referred to as the Lamb of God. John the Baptist was the first one to call our Lord, the Lamb of God. Thus in the mass the exclamation of John the Baptist was immortalized in the act of the priest while raising the consecrated host and saying, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, happy are we who are called to this banquet". This leads us now to the significance of the term house of Bread. In the eucharist Jesus becomes our bread, our food and drink. The food and drink that will sustain us to eternal life. This is the main reason why we call this holy day Christmas because this is the mass of Christ. In the Holy Eucharist we see the manger crib with Christ offering himself to us in the cross as the Lamb of God and offering the bread to us as the house of bread.