Sometimes I wonder if I will ever begin to understand the country I live in.

Last week, I blogged about the week between X’mas and New Year. You know, that strange lull when many of us are on vacation and those of us at work find ourselves endlessly watching the clock. Or surfing random websites. Anything to pass the time while waiting for the callbacks that never come since everyone we’re dialing is out of the office.

Kay ribbed me about my bosses reading the post. It turns out that wasn’t the problem. The problem was how I spelled the holiday - X’mas. 

“Did you do that on purpose?” my brother-in-law asks, curious, when we all get together for New Year’s Eve.

“Uhm. What do you mean,” I say.

This is how I discover that apparently some people think that those who spell Christmas X’mas are trying to secularize the holiday, to take the “Christ” out of Christmas, if you will.

This is so far off tangent, so unbelievably unbelievable I am at a loss for words.

I can’t help but think: did I just offend a bunch of Cribsheeters without meaning to?

I’m not particularly religious, having spent part of my youth running away from Christians and Muslims both trying to convert my recalcitrant soul (though not at the same time). These days, I’ll light some joss sticks at the Buddhist temple with my parents on Chinese New Year. Then on Christmas Eve, dress the girls up and take them to church with my mother-in-law. But if there’s one thing I believe in, it’s live and let live.

“I spell it X’mas because it’s shorter!” I splutter.

I ask him where this X’mas theory comes from and he says his mother told him that when he was a boy. Oh.

So naturally, we ask his mother. She says she doesn’t remember. Oh.

So we do what any reasonable family would do whenever something like this comes up. We google “Origins of X’mas.”

Apparently lots of people have pondered the very issue. Several web sites noted that the first two Greek letters for Christ are “chi” or “x,” so X became a symbol for Christ dating back to the 1500’s.

I won’t profess to have known that. All I know from growing up in Malaysia is the big department stores all used “X’mas” in their big sale banners during the holidays. Not because it was a Muslim country trying to take the Christ out of Christmas, but because it was shorter.

My brother-in-law is intrigued by the Greek letter theory.

We all learn something new everyday.

“You’ve had a go at Halloween and Christmas,” my brother-in-law jokes. “When are you going to attack Thanksgiving?”

Maybe next year. But you can bet it’ll be unintentional.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 at 10:58 am and is filed under Holidays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.