2706 "X"

"The great enemy of the truth is very often
not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest --
but the myth -- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic."
-- John F. Kennedy --

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You know it's cold outside when you come into the house, get a package out of the freezer, and it feels warm.

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Singer Christine Mercado has changed her first name to "Xtine". People sometimes use "X" to stand for "Christ", as in "Xmas". Others will do it just to annoy purists. But most at least do it correctly. She screwed it up. The "t" is part of "Christ", so it should be "Xine". Yeah, I'm a purist, too, but she gets a laugh and a snort rather than a rise out of me.

Lesson for the day - Quoting from IS GOD AGAINST CHRISTMAS, by Raymond L. Cox:

"...the X in Xmas did not originate as our English alphabet's X but as the symbol X in the Greek alphabet, called Chi, with a hard ch. The Greek Chi or X is the first letter in the Greek word Christos. Eric G. Gration claims that as early as the first century the X was used as Christ's initial. Certainly through church history we can trace this usage. In many manuscripts of the New Testament, X abbreviates Christos (Xristos). In ancient Christian art X and XR (Chi Ro—the first two letters in Greek of Christos abbreviate his name. We find that this practice entered the Old English language as early as AD 100. Moreover, Wycliff and other devout believers used X as an abbreviation for Christ. Were they trying to take Christ away and substitute an unknown quantity? The idea is preposterous.

Some may use Xmas today as an unchristian shortcut for Christmas, but the ancient abbreviation by no means originated as such. The scribes who copied New Testament manuscripts had no intention of taking Christ out of the New Testament. They used the abbreviation simply to save time and space. We use abbreviations for the same purpose today, as witness FDR, HST, JFK, LBJ, and a host of others. Xmas is a legitimate abbreviation."

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I'm going to see "Avatar" in 3-D tonight in Albany. I'm going not so much for the story (not my favorite genre) as for the 3-D. The last 3-D movie I saw was in probably the '50s, in black and white with blue and red cellophane glasses, and a stupid storyline involving as many flying rocks and thrown chairs as could be crammed in. I want to see what it's like now.
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