Every year, even before Halloween on Oct. 31, Christmas worms its way into stores and shops everywhere like a spastic reflex. With the dawn of December, merchants and customers are in a fervor about Christmas. I often hear people spell "Christmas" as "X-mas" and talk about "X-mas" this and "X-mas" that. If I ask how one spells the word Christmas, I am given "X-mas" in reply, as if people do not recognize that it is an abbreviation of some other word to begin with.
In Japanese junior/senior high school textbooks, I have even seen Christmas written like that with no explanation. The situation is made worse because many native-English speakers also say "X-mas" and themselves do not know what the "X" means or why the abbreviation is spelled with an "X."
So let's put the record straight, and maybe readers will see it and remember: It isn't a Latin "X" at all. It's the Greek letter chi (pronounced "kai") which just happens to look like a Latin "X." "Christmas" is a Greek word — spelled chi-rho-iota-sigma-tau- mu-alpha-sigma that means, literally, the Mass of Christ — and "X-mas" is an abbreviation of that word. So people should be saying "Kai-mas" when they see, read and speak the abbreviation, which admittedly sounds silly.