HAPPY CHRISTMAS

May we all have a very happy Christmas. 

May we make Christmas  very Happy and Everything very Happy.  Always.

Easier said than done, but it's worth having a good try at it. Hoping we get there more often than not.

Some Christians  don't like  Christmas  being called Xmas and being wished a Merry Xmas. But the X is still shorthand  for Christ and " mas" is still shorthand for religious worship , so  Xmas is short for Christ's Mass, so where's the difference?  And in the very old days "merry"  probably meant  happier than usual, not riotously so. In the beautiful Zinneman film  A Man For All Seasons  about the life and death of Thomas More, murdered by Henry the Eighth , Thomas says to his grieving wife and family, "We shall meet merrily in heaven".   Thomas, sober, serious, severe and law-abiding Thomas, certainly did not have carousing in mind but quiet, thoughtful , shared happiness  to come. After all, he was about to be executed. So Merry  can just mean Happy Christmas, only better.  

Christians were always good at religious shorthand. In their early - persecuted - days when they wanted  to tell each other who they were and where they were they  drew or carved  a fish on the wall.  Or on a tomb. Or anywhere. Sacred graffiti : "You'll find a Christian down there at the sign of the Fish".  Signs on walls meant a lot more to  people who did not read as much as we do now, and we easily  forget what their graffiti  meant. Calling a pub "The Kings Head" may have meant  it was run by a  rebellious innkeeper, reminding people of King Charles the beheaded ;    calling it  "The Crown and Garter" an innkeeper  may have been envious of a monarch leading a  riotous  life and getting  away with it.

But a Fish as a Christian religious symbol ?  Irish people depict  the Salmon as a symbol of wisdom, so why not ? Some people  still use secret  codes and handshakes and gestures when they meet you  -- " getting to know you is important but getting to know if it's worth my while getting to know you is important too , are you one of us?".  In some places paper money  had  a hammer and sickle imprinted on it, some had  a square and compass, probably short for,  " There's more where this comes from if you're one of us......." ?

Christians  fleeing persecution in their bad times could say, "Stop a minute,  there's a house with a fish carved on the wall, like to know who it is....might be , well, one of us". 

In  Christian churches we can still notice a book or a window with  a line design on it that looks like the shape of a fish. Which of course it is, a sacred symbol announcing adherence, belief, welcome to  of Christians to and from each other. Many churches have at least one somewhere. The line drawing is saying  in code,  "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour", an important  message  for ancient Christians  wandering  in a strange land or under persecution. And a message for modern Christians living  comfortably  but forgetting what the secret symbol said. The secret was in the letters of the word IXTHUS, their Greek word for a Fish , its letters carried  the secret, sacred meaning : 

I  for "Jesus", X for  "Christ ",   TH  "of God ",   U for "Son" , S for "Saviour". That's as near as we can get to matching their everyday  lettering with ours.

The capital letter  X , then, short for Christ , just as in  "Xmas",  has a long and honourable history for Christians.

So -- Happy Christmas, or  Merry Christmas or Merry Xmas,or  Happy Festive Season from and to everyone . As they might say in the King's Head or the Salmon Leap or at The Sign of the Fish ,  whatever you're having yourself......