Does anyone remember a time when Christmas cards comprised a largish sheet of paper, folded twice?
I suppose I was around 8, and I had in front of me a clean sheet of paper. I was creating Christmas cards by folding, then folding again. I had colouring pencils of course. On some cards I would write Happy Christmas while on others I was writing what I had seen or heard people say: Happy Xmas.
Mum told me it was wrong to use Xmas. It had to be Christmas because it’s to do with Jesus. The implication was that slowly, the tinselly season had forgotten Jesus – as our culture reminds us each year.
But what made it worse, as I thought about it later, was this X-factor. I started to feel that X had many meanings – vague, undefined. It could replace or hide something.
Many years later, I was living in a community where a day book was kept for comments and suggestions. A woman wrote her name as X I A N. (Jaaan?). When I met her, she told me she pronounced it Christian.
More recently, and just to confirm for myself, I checked. In centuries past, X was shorthand for the word Christ.. The Greek letter chi (Χ) is the first letter of the Greek word Christos (Χριστός). The earliest example found in this country was from an Anglo-Saxon scribe. In 1021, he used X-mas as shorthand. So this ‘bad habit’ as my mum had said was a valid corruption, from the past. And now, Xmas can mean what people want it to mean.
We hold other associations with the letter ‘X’.
X marks the spot. But that’s all it does. What is behind the mark?
An X rated film.
My ‘ex’.
And my own association from secondary school. Those in the ‘X’ stream – like me – were supposedly not as bright as others
As we recognise, old legal documents such a wedding certificates often show ‘X’ for those who could not write their name. We ask ‘who is the person behind the X?’
Then also, we vote by carefully placing an X in the desired box.
And, after a test or examination, we may see a tick smiling up at us! But an X means we have got something wrong.
So X has a lot to answer for. It stands for this and that, but what is it? I’ll talk a bit, later, about our hymn, whose every line begins with ‘IT’!
As a child I heard the term ‘mystical’ and felt that it fitted me. It was about instincts and sensibility beyond wordy explanation. At 18, a particular visit to a pub with 6th form friends took this further. It was a Saturday night in the run up to Christmas, and a comment from my childhood friend. Out of a somewhat superficial discussion about religion and Christmas, my friend said in an assured tone, ‘Of course, there is no such thing as absolute truth’.
That’s a statement which presupposes total agreement. I remember turning and looking at her, but it was pointless to respond – in that moment, I sensed there are truths, but again, we cannot capture them in words – we must follow their hints.
From that point on, I yearned for a single year to ignore the outer Christmas, and to wait quietly upon something else, just as we wait during Advent.
Looking back to my time living in York, every November, a member of York Unitarians organises a Sale day, having invited representatives of several religious and ethnic groups, with all sorts of produce, set up in the chapel.
On a stall run by former refugees – Palestinian Christians – were figures like this one here. Yes, machine made of course – but the wood grain captured my attention. It meant the figures were not all the same after all. I enjoyed choosing.
Then I set aside this wooden figure for years, due I suppose, to questions about the supposed life events of Jesus. Then recently, I took it out.
A few questions to ponder:
Is this Jesus? I don’t mean, was it deliberately shaped to represent him, because I assume it was.
If you see the figure as Jesus, is he on a cross? Or is he holding his arms in welcome? Which way do we interpret this ‘icon’. I do see it as an icon.
Or is it ‘Everyman’, perenially open to human suffering?
Clearly, it is a person, and also a cross.We decide what it means for us. So it’s another X. And an X asks questions.
Before placing the burnished wooden figure onto the shelf, I found myself holding it firmly. There is something assuring about contact with the palm of the hand – it seems to send a message through the whole body. It’s a bit like shaking someone’s hand – there’s an intention to make a firm connection, palm to palm.
By buying the figure from the stall, I had supported a community in the Palestinian territories, but I still remained unsure about the person it represents – including his name. Just like X marking the spot, in his own time, of course he was not known as Christ – that’s a Greek term.
And the name Jesus is Greek, too. He was really Yeshua – in Hebrew, and in Aramaic, he was Yeshoo. Ah yes – Jesu… Always, as time goes by, some truth is veiled.
We sang today about IT! I chose that hymn because IT is not named at any point as God or Spirit – yet something prompts our every sincere wish, every greeting, every just action, every change of understanding. The hymn-writer leaves a pronoun where we expect a name. Imagination links us to the ineffable.
In our shared words each Sunday morning, we quote Thich Nhath Hanh in his term, The Great Compassion. We use many such terms, metaphors, to avoid fixing something too specifically.
As a musician, it was the songs of Sydney Carter which introduced me to this essential something, this IT.
Carter’s best-known songs were The Lord of the Dance, and When I needed a neighbour. Apparently, Christian friends -and fans I suppose, would ask him to confirm that this lord of the dance was Jesus. Carter would never say it was. He also spoke of the dancing god Shiva – whose figure he had on his desk.
A year or two ago, on the Sunday before Christmas, we sang Carter’s carol Every Star shall sing a Carol. And next week, our singing group will open the service with his song Present Tense. The message of Present Tense is somewhat parallel to When I needed a neighbour. ‘Are you walking the talk?!’
I came across Carter’s songs (or carols as he preferred to call them) when I played piano regularly at the local primary school.He had a love for metaphor in these songs. Travel On, Travel on to the river that is flowing, the river will be with you all the way. And, Unitarian Universalist writer Malvina Reynolds’ song God Bless the Grass is in our green hymn book. These songs later led to my coming to Unitarianism.
So, to return to the beginning:
As a child, I learnt how X can stand for many things. It may mark the spot, but it does not show the whole map. It is up to us to find the route that works for us.
As a teenager, that night in the pub when I was challenged by a friend’s philosophy – it became something enlightening: an assurance that some things cannot be described – they are concepts just beyond thought.
This wooden icon carries within it something almost out of reach. Holding it tightly, first, I love the touch of wood; but I’m also trusting the example of this man, Yeshua. And trust takes me further: I travel on, as Sydney Carter says, with the river that is with us all the way.
This period of Advent is meant to be about waiting – quietly: and looking beyond the all too visible world for guidance, for other truths. Just like X, there are many ways to read this season.
And if you are writing Christmas cards, you can write the word X-mas, and you may find yourself asking what it means to you.