What’s the deal with the “X” in Merry Xmas? Does it surprise you that’s it’s nothing nefarious? I grew up believing that replacing Christ with an X was akin to removing him from the celebration of Christmas. That using this shorthand teetered on blasphemy and was, therefore, inappropriate for Christians to pen on their Christmas cards or placard on their party signs. It never occurred to me that the X wasn’t meant to remove our Savior’s title from Christmas but to actually preserve it. Read the late Dr. R.C. Sproul’s explanation about how Merry Xmas has been used by Christians for centuries without any disrespect for Jesus or for the day that commemorates his birth.
The X in Christmas is used like the R in R.C. My given name at birth was Robert Charles, although before I was even taken home from the hospital my parents called me by my initials, R.C., and nobody seems to be too scandalized by that.
X can mean so many things. For example, when we want to denote an unknown quantity, we use the symbol X. It can refer to an obscene level of films, something that is X-rated. People seem to express chagrin about seeing Christ’s name dropped and replaced by this symbol for an unknown quantity X. Every year you see the signs and the bumper stickers saying, “Put Christ back into Christmas” as a response to this substitution of the letter X for the name of Christ…
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