not sure if you're aware, or not, but the fact is that Xmas and Christmas mean the exact same thing - that is, the use of an 'X' is not a replacement for the word Christ, but is simply a representation of it. in the old greek, 'Christ' was spelled ... hmmm, i don't have a greek keyboard ... ok, chi - rho - iota - sigma - tau - omicron - sigma ... essentially 'kristos'. the letter 'chi', of course, appears as our letter 'X', and was commonly used as a symbol for the word 'Christ'. one of the symbols that you'll commonly see in orthodox iconography is that of an intercrossed X and P, which stands for kristos rex - Christ the King - (or is simply the first two letter of kristos, chi and rho - i've heard both explanations). but at any rate, Xmas is not, then, a 'Christless' name for the evolved holiday, but is, in fact, simply another spelling for the 'Christ Mass' festivities. just on the outside chance that anyone gives a damn. i hope you (and everyone else here) had a good one, regardless. just a little ecclesiastical fun fact for rick's thread. carry on.
For us atheists: "Happy formerly celebrated winter solstace everyone!" Christmas used to be a pagan holiday originally celebrated by the Romans for the winter solstace, which they thought was on December 25th. Later it was adopted by the Church as Christmas. Bit of a history lesson for us.
They were celebrating the Solstice, and then the Christians needed a date for Christmas, so they picked up the longstanding winter celebration of the solstice. Jesus was likely born in or around May between 2-7 BC.
i know that. you said "Pagan's were celebrating Christmas..." when they clearly weren't. There were celebrating the winter solstice/Saturnalia/Sol Invictus/countless other "winter festivals" Christians celebrate Christmas, commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, it was just "conveniently" placed in December I can see all the bigwigs in robes running around going, "we need more converts. we need to have a celebration as good as Saturnalia!"
I obviously didn't mean that Pagans were celebrating "Christmas"; I meant that pagans were celebrating during the holiday that would later come to be Christmas. It may haven been written as "Pagans were celebrating Christmas" but I would suggest it was a rather easy inference that that wasn't what I meant. Anyway, not to turn this topic into a debate.
We say have a nice day. We just have to say it a lot more often. Edit: Of course if you want to have something on the 25th of December, just to keep with the crowd, and like me you mostly believe in physics, you can celebrate Sir Isaac Newton's birthday. You have to use the Gregorian calendar, though.