Invisible Footprints

Sick of Xmas comments

At 4:22 PM, Dory said...

The X in Xmas is not our letter X. It is the Greek letter Chi (pronounced like key), which looks like our X. It is the letter that Christ begins with in the Greek and it has been used for centuries as an abbreviation or symbol for Christ--not just in English, but in all the languages of Christendom. It was never meant to be disrespectful. It was quite common until fairly recently to abbreviate the word Christian as Xian.

At 1:58 AM, kItttttt said...

perhaps this may be the source of your comments. while i will not contest the validation of history, i somehow believe that there have been an air of cynicality during which writers/philosophers/linguist decided on abbrevating Christ with an X. Hell must be LOL at the abbrevation of a name of such significance with an X or a Greek letter in the English language, where 1000 years later, when everything is arbitrary and contestable, people would be confused by the significance of the original name and the abbrevation itself.

I still believe in putting the Christ back into Christmas (although i admit the information asymmetry on my part), since the abbrevation has its meaning drowned in history and its significance is belongs to Greek.

posted by kItttttt @ 9:38 pm