Word for Word: X-mas

For years, many devout Christians have claimed that the abbreviation "X-mas" is tantamount to blasphemy. While devotion and ignorance are not necessarily synonymous, it behooves those with immoderate convictions (religious or otherwise) to scrutinize their persuasions in order to ensure that they have not mistaken ill-informed precepts for absolute truth.

As a matter of fact, the Catholic Church coined the abbreviation "X-mas."

In the original Greek version of the New Testament the word "Christ" (Khristos) begins with the Greek character "X," or "chi" and appears as follows:

Χριστός

The Roman letter "X" (the 24th letter of our alphabet) is identical in appearance to the Greek character "chi." In the early days of printing and typesetting, the Church began abbreviating the word "Christ" with the letter "X." (Such abbreviations were highly cost effective and, as a result, a common phenomenon.)

"X" was embraced as a proxy for the word "Christ" and appeared in a variety of abbreviations, including "X-ian" (Christian), "X-enned" (Christened), and, of course, "X-mas."

There you have it!

And, please, have a Merry Christmas!

Luck of the Irish

From the December 2006 issue of Harper's Magazine:

ASK NOT

From a November 10, 1962, letter by Rose Kennedy to her son, President John F. Kennedy, among 252 boxes of her notes and letters released in September by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.

Dear Jack,

In looking over my old diary, I found that you were urged on one occasion, when you were five years old, to wish for a happy death. But you turned down this suggestion and said that you would like to wish for two dogs instead. So do not blame the Bouviers if John has similar ideas.

Much love, dear Jack.

Well, shit.

A confession...

Whenever I hear Melissa Block or Robert Siegel or Charlie Rose refer to "sectarian violence," I imagine--against my better intelligence--hundreds of secretaries, each seated at a large metal desk, carefully crafting paper airplanes armed with thumbtacks and staples, maliciously coordinating office-wide computer viruses, and cleverly programming ink jet printers to self destruct when asked to "collate."


Sec(re)tarian Violence. Absurd? Yes. Insensitive? Probably. But true all the same.

It's The Great Gatsby, Charlie Brown!

Following is an excerpt from a story I am writing about a door-to-door Oxford English Dictionary salesman. Sections of the story are based on my early experiences in Chicago.

My neighborhood was freckled with rowdy sports bars--establishments featuring dozens of widescreen televisions, a variety of lo-carb beers, and, on Thursday nights, six-dollar Long Island iced teas. Packed, from wall to wall, with rugged young men displaying Greek characters on their skintight t-shirts, these watering holes reeked of stale cigarettes, eau de toilette, and unwashed armpits.

Counterpoint: I attended Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, where students have been known to frolic through the woods, reciting Shakespeare and Milton. The college bookstore features a t-shirt that reads: “Vassar Football: Undefeated since 1861.” (One cannot be defeated if one does not exist.) No surprise, then, that I experienced a bit of culture shock upon arriving in a neighborhood marked by chronic nostalgia for Sigma Alpha Epsilon.

Sitting, one evening, at a relatively tame neighborhood saloon, enjoying an Irish whiskey, I engaged in what ultimately became a ruinous conversation with the gentleman seated next to me. Following a brief introduction, he offered: “I’m from St. Paul. You ever been?”

“No,” I said. “I’d love to visit. I actually wrote my undergraduate thesis on F. Scott Fitzgerald. He was born in St. Paul.”

“Oh, nice! F. Scott Fitzgerald. Yeah, I love ‘The Peanuts.’ Charlie Brown is hysterical.”

Conversations like this one leave me wondering: where did all of the smart people go and why wasn't I invited?

And now, you must watch this!

Hanukka, Hollywood Style

From HARPER'S WEEKLY REVIEW, 12.5.06:

Conservative rabbis in Beverly Hills called for an end to the religious edict forbidding oral sex between men; anal congress, however, would still be forbidden.

OKAY!

Botching Jokes since 1943

A great deal of attention has been paid to John Kerry's recent "botched joke," which addressed the (inevitable) relationship between college grades and military service.

The media has questioned whether or not this "b.j." will affect Mr. Kerry's potential bid for the White House in 2008.

I voted for John Kerry in 2004 and, to this day, consider his loss something of a tragedy.

Tragedy, as a dramatic form, necessitates a hero with an inborn flaw that will ultimately bring about his demise. Often times an oracle will identify a hero's flaw early in the hero's life. The oracle will also forecast the manner in which this hero will meet his quietus.

Now I am no oracle--only hindsight allows me to remove my spectacles--but allow me to say, here and now, that John Kerry is about as funny as a pencil.



(Unfortunately, unlike a pencil, he doesn't have an eraser.)