Jesus X

You want to tick off a bunch of people this Christmas season?  Of course, who doesn't?  All you have to do is send out your Christmas cards with the message, "Wishing you and yours a very Merry X-mas."  Most of your friends and family probably won't say a word about it, at least not to your face, but certainly a couple hyper-sensitive folks with nothing better to do will take exception to the "X-mas" part.

The assumption is, when you use "X-mas," you're "taking Christ out of Christmas," and by doing so you expose yourself as a pagan nimrod, destined to spend eternity burning to a crisp in the company of Satan, Osama bin Laden, Adolf Hitler, and whoever invented beat-boxing.  How dare you "cross out Jesus's name" from the holiday where we celebrate his birth?

I did some research (believe it or not) to determine when this illicit yuletide abbreviation was introduced.  Turns out that in Greek, X is the first letter in the word "Christ," and was used as early as the 1600's to abbreviate words like Xian (Christian), Xianity (Christianity), and Xanthemum (Chrysanthemum).  It wasn't done out of disrespect, it was done because when your only writing instruments are chisels, or perhaps the Gutenberg Printing Press (invented by Johannes Gutenberg, the great-great-great-great grandfather of Police Academy star Steve Guttenberg), you want to shorten as many words as possible.

So basically, referring to Christmas as "X-mas" is just like calling Alex Rodriguez "A-rod."  Not that I'm comparing the Yankee third baseman to the yuletide season, but you have to admit, there are some similarities.  For example, they're both good for one month of excitement per year, neither one shows up in October, and when all is said and done, you have to admit you spent way too much money.  Also, X-mas features artificial trees, A-rod displays artificial muscles.

But I digress.

I realize, of course, that certain devout types will still object to "X-mas," so in an effort to bring peace and joy to all mankind (and womankind, back off ladies), I am offering a solution.  A way to "level the playing field," if you will.

We're going to start replacing the letter X with the word "Christ" wherever it makes sense to do so.  For example, the game Tic-Tac-Toe will require one person to be "O's" and his opponent to be "Christs."  Sure, they'll be harder to draw, but we're talking about equality not convenience.

Other changes:

When burying treasure, pirates will "mark the spot" with a Christ.

Hospitals' radiology departments will stock up on Christ-ray machines.

David Duchovny will star in the next Christ-Files movie.

Wolverine and his buddies will be known as the Christ-Men.

Women will spend weekend after weekend searching for a hot guy with the Christ-factor.[1]

And of course, the 1960's civil rights leader will henceforth be referred to as Malcolm Christ.  I'm sure that won't cause a ruckus, right?

Now if you'll Christ-cuse me, I'm off to do some X-mas shopping.


[1] Thanks to Olivia for this one.