I feel rather didactic at the moment, so I’ve decided to reveal something I discovered for myself only a few years back. How I wish someone had told me this much earlier.

I remember asking my dad why Christmas was often spelt X’mas. I was probably around 8 then.

He told me that ‘X’ is (obviously) a cross, and the cross represents Christ. Thus Christmas can be written as X’mas. Simple?

Sorry dad - that was quite clever, but quite wrong.

Christmas is sometimes spelt X’mas because the greek letter Χ (Chi) was used to represent Christ. Christ is Χριστος (Christos) in greek, which was sometimes abbreviated to Χς (Chi sigma - the first and last letters of Χριστος), and sometimes further abbreviated to Χ (Chi).

Why all this greek? That’s because the New Testament of the Bible was written in greek (the New Testament is the part of the Bible that’s centered around Jesus Christ).

So there you go. Ho ho ho.