If you’ve ever gotten angry or offended at the abbreviation “X-mas” (a common shorthand for Christmas), have I got a surprise for you.

Growing up, I remember people at my church getting up in arms about X-Mas. “After all,” they argued, “using such an abbreviation was literally taking the Christ out of Christmas, removing the holiday’s key component, right? How could there be a more brazen display of secularizing the holiday?!” The argument sounded good enough to me at the time (since I couldn’t have been older than 8 or 9 and was particularly gullible). Still, whenever the subject came up, I would see my parents covertly laugh. When I finally asked what was so funny about X-mas, my mom explained:

“Oh, we’re laughing because, in Greek, the first letter of Christ is Chi.”
“Okay, and…?”
“And you know what the letter Chi looks like, right?”
“Um…”
“The Greek letter Chi looks exactly like an English letter X, so what everyone has been calling ‘X-mas’ is really ‘Chi-mas.’ It would be no different than writing down your name as ’T Lewis.’ No one is X-ing out Jesus. It’s just the first letter of his name, so merry Chi-mas!”

Looking back, it’s hard to imagine all that rage over a letter-based misunderstanding. I haven’t heard anyone lambast the use of “X-mas” lately, but whenever I hear outrage about the holidays, I always think back to this silly example. People have been complaining about the de-sanctifying of Christmas since before I was born, but wether you call it Christmas or X-mas or Chi-mas, it’s still a season of giving and compassion, so how could Christ not be in it? No matter what we call this time of year, when we show the love of Christ, Christ is here.