Celebrating X-mas

It used to be everyone took a shortcut to Christmas, spelling it “X-mas”. Then some people raised a stink about it, saying that was taking Christ out of Christmas and they’d get on everyone who did it until nobody dared do it anymore.

The issue came up again and a friend of mine mentioned that one of the symbols for Christ is the Chi Rho, what looks like an “X” with a “P” in the center of it. The Chi Rho, from the Greek alphabet, form the first two letters of the word Christ: chi = ch and rho = r, according to wikipedia.org.

My friend said if it was okay to use the Chi Rho in religion (and a lot of clergy do wear the symbol), then it was okay to use for “X-mas”, because it means the same thing as “Christ”.

Which is probably how the practice originated in the first place.