Christmas, Take Two.

This was a big week: the first blizzard of the year snow, showing winter is seriously here to stay. I'm lining up the final Vespers set for the semester, and I've been searching for a good handful of Christmas hymns to finish off with.

I love this time of year. The Christmas spirit is in the air. Vacation is in sight. NFL teams have worked out the kinks and really start to shine. I even enjoy winter- at least the beginning of it. (And when there is minimal wind!)

Lately, I've felt like the Grinch. I did my Christmas shopping; my gifts were the first ones wrapped, even before the tree was set up at home. I bought candy canes several weeks. My cupboard is bursting with sugar cookie ingredients and festive cookie cutters. N*Sync and Point of Grace Christmas CDs have been promptly rotated from the back of my cd collection to the front.

For some reason, this year feels different than others. Maybe I'm finally growing up. I feel like a kid who found out Santa Claus isn't real this year.

I looked up 'Christmas' on wikipedia and there I learned that the letter X (chi) is the first letter of Christ in Greek. The similar Roman letter X has been used as an abbreviation for Christ since the mid-16th century. Therefore, Xmas is often used as an abbreviation for Christmas. People freak out that the X is taking Christ out of the holiday.

And that word: holiday. I love saying happy holidays. It's not that I want to be politically correct. I'm just too lazy to say "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year." I think that's actually what a lot of people mean when they use that word. Could it be that when people extend a happy holiday greeting.

I wish I knew a Jew. I wonder if I would wish them Happy Hanukkah because that's what they celebrate, or a Merry Christmas because that's what I celebrate. Why is Happy Holidays such a bad thing?