Holiday Stuff

Yes I said holiday and not Christmas. I'm not sure who is still sensitive to saying of "Happy Holiday" and "Seasons Greetings" versus "Merry/Happy Christmas" (depends of what English speaking country you come from) and possibly writing down the holiday as Xmas or saying it as "eks-mas" versus the whole word but it's not something to fuss about whether one is religious or not.

a little look at some of these words:

First: holiday. The word originally means "holy day" as in a day to celebrate religious festivities and nowadays it also applies to taking time of to either rest or when people are given some time off from school or work.

Christmas I believe is "Christ's mass" with the Old English suffix -mas meaning "a holy, sacred day"

Xmas is a shortening of Christmas and I can't remember where I've heard this but there's this idea of taking the "Christ" out of "Christ"mas with some people. First of all this is useful when one doesn't have a lost of space to write out Christmas and with texting messages to one another takes less time to punch in those letters. Secondly don't think of X as being said as X in English. You have Χριστός (Christos) in Greek and Христос (Xristos) in Cyrillic. Think of the X as coming from those (the X in Cyrillic makes a "kh" sound more or less) so if anyone really cares about this wrap your minds around this idea.


As for saying Happy Holidays vs. Merry Christmas: Happy Holidays speaks out to everyone while Merry Christmas seems to speak to a few. It's a personal choice whether to say one or the other (or whatever greeting one chooses) so don't take too much offence if you're religious and someone says Happy Holiday instead of Merry Christmas (same goes for a non-religious person when someone greets Merry Christmas or whatever).


Anyways so whatever you do around this time of the year stay safe and Merry/Happy <insert holiday here>


because I'm to lazy:http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/holiday
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Christmas
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Xmas

edited on December 23, 2010