If your Facebook news feed is anything like mine, it’s populated by status updates from three types of people: those who love Christmas, those who hate Christmas, and those who are desperate to put Christ back in Christmas.
The third group is, of course, referring to the apparently secular designation “X-mas.”
I am not among those bothered by “X-mas”, partly because I’m not sure the title is worth a fight and partly because I’m not sure that X-mas is so anti-Christ as it’s made out to be.
After all, when I think of an “X” in place of something in a word, the first thing that comes to mind is those signs in front of Walmarts everywhere.
PED XING they declare in bold caps.
Pedestrian crossing.
X=Cross
Cross-Mas.
I can handle that.
The second thing I think of when I think of an X in place of a word is how illiterate individuals sign their names.
I know that Jesus wasn’t illiterate–he did, after all, take his place reading the Torah in the synagogue (Luke 4:16-21). But he was the companion of uneducated, common men (Acts 4:13). Throughout his life, Jesus spent time with the lowest of the low, the “underclass” of the Jewish world–Samaritans, prostitutes, tax collectors. You couldn’t go any lower.
Except that Jesus did. He went as low as absolutely possible, humbling himself to take on the humiliation of every man–every sin ever committed. He identified with–no, he became the lowest of the low by taking on man’s sin and bearing man’s curse.
I can see Jesus signing His name with a bold “X”, a reminder of of his identification with the downtrodden.
But the X doesn’t only mean “Cross” like in Ped Xing. It isn’t simply a mark in place of a signature.
X is also the Latinized version of the Greek letter CHI.
As in Χριστός (Christos).
Yes, that’s right.
X-mas means CHRISTmas.
Which is probably why I’m not too bothered by it.
Interested in reading more about the word “X-mas”? Check out Wikipedia’s article on the topic.
As an additional note, I always pronounce the word “X-mas” as “KRISS-MUSS”, never as “EX MUSS”; just as I never (except in jest) say “I EM AACH OH” when I mean “In my humble opinion.”
IMHO (read “In my humble opinion”), X-mas is an abbreviation that should be used only to save space in print, not to degrade the spoken language.