I've blurted out last December on the Happy Holidays vs. Merry Christmas and that included the use of Xmas.
Though this is mentioned in the linked post Christmas means "Christ's mass" with -mas meaning "holy day". X in Cyrillic and Greek make a 'kh' sound as in their words for Christ Христос and Χριστός.
What I didn't mention is why not have x as a variable? I mean not everyone celebrates Christmas in the sense that the cycle of Jesus being born only to die and resurrect 3 or 4 months later depending on when the first full moon occurs in spring or however Easter works.
Eastern Rite Christians celebrate Christmas in January as they follow the Julian calendar for their feast days.
There are also other Religious groups that may have their holidays around the same time though this is also dependent on how their calendar works.
Then there are those who are not religious at all who either take advantage of the holiday to spend time with loved ones or just treat the day as a normal day.
So why not Xmas? Set it up this way:
Xmas = 1 where x is whatever you want to put it.
but for those who can't stop ranting about how x is taking the Christ out of Christmas . . .
Xmas = 1 iff (if and only if) x is Christ
So go ahead and greet people Merry Xmas. I'm sure there are people sick of constantly seeing "He is the reason for the season" and whatever that goes around.
No comments:
Post a Comment