The Christian Year – The Christmas Season, the second season of the Christian Year (and also the shortest) begins on Christmas Day, and lasts for just twelve days, ending on the 5th of January. Christmas celebrates God’s coming into the world in human form in the person of Jesus. As John 1.14 puts it, The Word [Jesus] became flesh, and made his dwelling among us. And, as Luke 2.1-21 tells us, Jesus came into the world in the same way that all humans do – as a baby.
There was no formal celebration of Jesus’ birth in the earliest centuries of church history, and it was not until the 300s that Christians created a festival for this purpose. Since no one knew the actual date of Jesus’ birth, the church “Christianized” an already-existing Roman festival celebrating the “re-birth” of the sun after the winter solstice, and made it instead a celebration of the birth of Jesus.
Christmas is the first of the four major festivals of the Christian Year, and it is closely followed by the second, Epiphany, on the 6th of January, which commemorates the visit of the Magi (Wise Men) in Jesus’ early childhood (Matthew 2.1-12). The other two major festivals are Easter and Pentecost. The symbolic color for both Christmas and Epiphany is white, signifying joy and celebration.
Xmas – The abbreviation “Xmas” for Christmas is not an irreverent one, but is quite legitimate. The “X” is actually the Greek letter “khi”, the first letter of the Greek word Χριστός (Khristos), meaning “Christ”.