I know Christians usually don’t like the use of Xmas. They feel like Jesus is being x’d out of the holiday.

For the record, the use of Xmas was an attempt to abbreviate Christmas that I find interesting.

X represents the Greek letter chi; it’s the first letter in Christ. Jesus isn’t being x’d out of Christmas with Xmas, he’s being chi’d in!

You’ve probably seen that Greek letter chi on bumper stickers. It’s normally inside a fish symbol, and it looks like this:

ΙΧΘΥΣ

Iota, chi, theta, upsilon, sigma: It spells ichthus, which is the Greek word for fish. It stands for Iesous, Christos, Theou, Uios, Soter—Jesus, Christ, of God, Son, Savior.

When you see it, it’s not pronounced iks-oh-yay; it’s pronounced ik´-thoos, soft th, long oo.

And if you don’t mind the Χ in ΙΧΘΥΣ, then you don’t have to mind it in Χmas, either!