Don’t send me christmassy Wishes

It’s that time of the year again, when your hibernating hamster contacts come out of their burrows to share their season’s greetings. I’m talking of those friends you never hear from until December. The ones that send season’s greetings en masse.

It’s a good thing to hear from old friends, but we have to draw the line at some point. When they come out of hibernation bearing home baked cookies from last year, we certainly have to deepen the line.

Sending the same texts, each year is as atrocious as the cookies from last year or serving dried up weetabix after a year of preparation.

What bothers me is the ease with which they think they can saunter into my life after missing out on my birthday and other significant events that happen in the course of a year.

I personally don’t reply these messages at Christmas or New Year’s. I don’t because it doesn’t matter to them. It doesn’t matter to them because they’ve purged. They’ve purged by dooming us to their broadcast list where they dole out boilerplate Christmassy speech, like a captor bringing us ration each night. Least they can do is to insert my name in there somewhere but no, that’ll ruin the broadcast.

I received one of these yesterday, albeit slightly different from the generic:

Wishing you a <insert wishes> and a <adjective> New Year <emoji>

It still had traces of detachment. Here is a copy of the text, plain and unedited:

Xmas” is not a non-religious version of “Christmas”. The “X” is actually indicating the Greek letter “Chi”, which is short for the Greek, meaning “Christ”. So “Xmas” and “Christmas” are equivalent in every way except their lettering.

In fact, although writing guides such as those issued by the New York Times; the BBC; The Christian Writer’s Manual of Style; and Oxford Press discourage the use of Xmas in formal writing, at one time, it was a very popular practice, particularly with religious scribes, who are thought to have started the whole “Xmas” thing in the first place. Indeed, the practice of using the symbol “X” in place of Christ’s name has been going on amongst religious scholars for at least 1000 years.

Eventually, this shorthand trick spread to non-religious writings where nearly everywhere “Christ” appeared in a word, the Greek Chi would replace that part of the word. For example, in the 17th and 18th centuries, there are numerous non-religious documents containing instances of “Xine”, which was a common spelling for someone whose name was Christine.

Merry Christmas! 🎄🎉🎅🏽

It’s an “unconventional” text to receive on Christmas. The text sought to pacify the religious fundamentalist with the brief history; and the fellow hibernating hamsters with the season’s emojis 🎄🎉🎅🏽.

Now what did the text do to me since I was the recipient? It left me with more questions than answers: does this “X” transcend into math? Is the unknown variable Christ 🤔? If it is, then Christ is the answer to calculus – no? Is the X chromosome in sex determination the Jesus chromosome 😩? Does it have anything to do with his birth 😳? I’m confused.😒