3 Things You Probably Didn't Know About The Holiday Season | The Odyssey Online
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3 Things You Probably Didn't Know About The Holiday Season

How many of these fun facts did you know?

Zoe James
Dec 24, 2019
National Writers Society
156
3 Things You Probably Didn't Know About The Holiday Season
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In This Article:

In this day and age, the viral social media post about how modern day holidays are sacrilegious, missing the point, or just not at all what holidays were intended as, but a lot of people who say those things are misinformed!

Here's a list of random holiday tidbits you probably didn't know!

"Xmas" doesn't "take the Christ out of Christmas"

Replacing "Christ" with the letter "X" is not just someone being lazy because they don't want to honor Christ and say Christmas.

The X is not removing Christ from Christmas, it is simply a shorter way to write the word. Don't believe me?

The English word "Christ" comes from Greek. The word is "Christos" or "Khristos."

The Greek alphabet is different from ours, and the letter for "ch" is called "Chi." Chi is written as an X — we have fraternities and sororities that are Chi-something or something-Chi, like Chi Omega or Delta Chi, and when those organizations sport their official Greek letters, they have an X for the Chi.

Calling Christmas "Xmas" is not taking Christ out of Christmas. Simply, it is an abbreviated version. Simply, if in the alphabet we use, it is saying "Ch-mas," which is literally just an abbreviation. Calling is Cmas (or Ch-mas) isn't controversial, so why should honoring the etymology of the word Christ be controversial?

There really are 12 days of Christmas

It's not just a song!

The Christmas season starts on December 25th and continues for the subsequent 11 days, until January 6th, the Feast of Epiphany. If you're more religious, you know that three kings day or Epiphany is the representation of when the wise men reached baby Jesus with their gifts.

The 12 days of Christmas do not start on December 13th! Saying Merry Christmas on the 20th or the 16th of December is inaccurate, whereas saying Merry Christmas on December 29th is perfectly in line with the Christmas season.

Like the Lenten season, the Easter season, the season of Epiphany — the season for these monumental days in the Christian calendar are in line with the stories. The 12 days of Christmas follow Christmas day, they do not lead up to it!

Figgy pudding... isn't a pudding, nor does it contain figs

Figgy pudding is a pudding in the British sense, where "pudding" means "dessert."

It does not, however, contain any figs. It typically has raisins, currants, and brandy, but, alas, no figs!

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