{"id":18473,"date":"2014-12-10T09:39:14","date_gmt":"2014-12-10T16:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/?p=18473"},"modified":"2014-12-10T09:39:14","modified_gmt":"2014-12-10T16:39:14","slug":"top-five-things-youre-getting-wrong-about-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/top-five-things-youre-getting-wrong-about-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Five Things You’re Getting Wrong about Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christmas<\/a> is likely the most diverse celebration in all the world. It is celebrated in one form or another in every country of the world. It has the longest known history of any holiday. So it comes as a surprise that when most people are surveyed about the common things of Christmas<\/a> \u2013 they get it wrong. <\/p>\n

Here are the top five things you\u2019re getting wrong about Christmas<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Atheists and Non-Christians Don\u2019t Celebrate Christmas<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, they do \u2013 more than half of them according to a LifeWay Research poll from 2010. 90 percent of agnostics and 62 percent of Muslims, Jews and folks of faiths other than Christianity celebrate Christmas<\/a>. Books have been written about the subject. Christmas<\/a> is famously secular in modern society and because there are some vocal critics who claim to represent atheists relatively few who claim faithlessness belong to any kind of organized group and tend to go their own way when it comes to Christmas<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Xmas is the Lazy Way to Say Christmas<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

No, it isn\u2019t. \u201cX\u201d is the Greek letter representing Christ and in ancient writing Christmas<\/a> was always represented this way. Like all things culturally the \u201cXmas\u201d spelling of Christmas<\/a> has melded with other cultural anomalies of Christmas<\/a> to just become an accepted part of it. There is nothing remotely offensive about it. <\/p>\n

Happy Holidays is the Politically Correct Way to Say Merry Christmas<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

This is probably the whopper of all the errors of Christmas<\/a>. Entire campaigns are launched on social media trying to get Christians to avoid saying Happy Holidays as a substitution for Merry Christmas<\/a> because of the belief it is a politically correct substitute. The word \u201choliday\u201d is a derivative of the term \u201choly days\u201d. It in fact may be more religiously significant than the phrase \u201cMerry Christmas\u201d. The word \u201cmerry\u201d in some cultures suggests drunkenness. <\/p>\n

There were Three Wise Men<\/strong><\/p>\n

Celebrated on stage, in song and in scripture the wise men of the Nativity actually had no known number. Most assume there were three because the Bible lists the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh as being brought to the Christ Child. But in actuality the real number of wise men is never disclosed and historians have long suggested there could have been more. <\/p>\n

Christmas<\/a> Wasn\u2019t Celebrated Before Christ <\/strong><\/p>\n

This one even gets repeated by media types, scholars and historians. Christmas<\/a> was long celebrated before Christ. Ever hear the words \u201cFor unto us a child is born\u201d? Most recognize that from Handel\u2019s Messiah. Handel took those words from the book of Isaiah in the Old Testament of the Bible, words written some five centuries before Christ. For nearly 4000 years of recorded history before Christ the anticipation and celebration of His birth is well noted. <\/p>\n

Christmas<\/a> is understood by most on modern terms and is continually redefined by how peoples and cultures of today celebrate it. But its roots and its history are ancient. Many of the iconic elements of the season \u2013 everything from mistletoe to Christmas<\/a> trees to eggnog<\/a> \u2013 have ancient roots that represent something far different from what they symbolize for people today. <\/p>\n

This is why there are constant debates about Christmas<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The savvy Christmas<\/a> fan celebrates past and present of Christmas<\/a> and looks for ways to make what is old meaningful again. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christmas is likely the most diverse celebration in all the world. It is celebrated in one form or another in every country of the world. It has the longest known history of any holiday. So it comes as a surprise that when most people are surveyed about the common things of Christmas \u2013 they get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","iawp_total_views":79,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,2,76],"tags":[174],"class_list":["post-18473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christmas-features","category-christmas-news","category-christmas-trends","tag-christmas-mistakes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}