Alright people. I've got something that I think needs to be said and I've decided to say it here. I'm going to lay some linguistic knowledge down on you guys because there's a term that gets put down every year, and I'm tired of it. Since we're now at the beginning of December, I'm already seeing people saying Xmas is derogatory, or that it's a secular attempt to take Christ out of Christmas.
To which I respond with either an eye roll or a deep, resounding cry of bullshit!, depending on where I happen to be. Listen, people have been abbreviating Christ as X for a good long time. There are references to certain abbreviations for Christ as far back as 1021, in Anglo-Saxon. Here's a little explanation. The New Testament was written in Greek, and Christ is spelled, pardon my latinization of this, Christos, which starts with the letter Chi, which looks like an X. Enterprising scribes, deciding they were writing the name Christ thousands of times while transcribing the bible abbreviated it X, or Xr (once again using latin letters). The labarum, an amalgamation of the symbols Chi and Rho, the first two letters in Christos, is still used as a religious symbol among some groups.
OK? It's not derogatory, it's not secular, it's lazy. Do I have a problem with laziness? No. To lift a line from Sherlock Holmes, I'm the most incurably lazy devil ever to stand in shoe leather. I just get so sick of seeing this same debate over and over again, every year on the internet.
