So This Is Xmas

Early this morning, as I was scrolling through Facebook, I noticed a friend had tagged another friend with photo of a billboard. The message on that billboard read, “The X belongs in Texas. Christ belongs in Christmas.” I innocently commented that I hoped my friends realized that “X” stands for Christ, and to look it up.

The immediate response was, “ I hope you realize I feel it’s wrong to still not use Christ in Christmas. It’s laziness.”

I was prompted by this to do a little research about the use of “X”. It turns out it was first used hundreds of years ago by religious scholars in religious manuscripts. It has a long and sacred history. There is no disrespect intended.

The X comes from the first letter of the Greek word for Christ. Yes, it was used as an abbreviation, but most people at that time clearly recognized it as meaning Christ. One site I visited said X was first used in the mid-1500’s, while another site claimed it was used as far back as the 1100’s. In any case, X has been as acceptable representation of “Christ” for many centuries. In fact, you can find many documents from the 17th and 18th centuries using “Xine” for Christine, or “Xopher” for Christopher.

There are businesses who, for commercial reasons (to sell products at this time of year), will use Xmas rather than Christmas. Sometimes they do this simply to cut costs in their advertising as Xmas takes up a lot less space and/or less ink. Some may do it thinking to not offend their non-Christian customers. Perhaps they’ll even use a generic “Happy Holidays” in an attempt to not offend.

There are militant Christians who are highly offended by this. If you wish them Happy Holidays, they will snap back, with great emphasis, “It’s CHRISTmas!”, which I don’t find to be a very Christian attitude. They get all holier-than-thou at this time of year. Personally, I’m pleased whenever anyone greets me and wishes me well, whether they say Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Feliz Navidad, Happy Hanukkah, or Merry Kwanzaa. I will try to accept their good wishes in the manner they intended. I may reply in kind, or I may respond with any of the above examples, or simply say, “The same to you.”.

I find the attitudes of those who are snippy about this, insisting on emphasizing the Christ part of the greeting, to be off-putting and much less likely to make the person who innocently offended (by not using what they insist is the only proper greeting about this holiday) want to join them in their church.

As far as it being laziness, we Americans are greatly prone to abbreviating everything. We have tons of acronyms. Who insists that we always spell out Federal Bureau of Investigation? Do we not all understand AF stands for Air Force? Do these people always spell out cannot and do not, or do they use can’t and don’t? Do they not shorten people’s names, so that Angela becomes Angie, or Richard becomes Rich or Rick or Dick, or Thomas becomes Tom? Isn’t this the same “laziness”?

Why do we have to have this same argument ever year? Why do we have to make this joyous season one of contention? If you wish to say Merry Christmas, just say it. But don’t try to dictate to everyone you meet that they greet you in what you consider to be the only proper manner. This is America. We have many religions, not all of which recognize Christ, yet we all have this holiday.

Merry Xmas to you all.