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Comment by ComputerGuru | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious, is "Christain" really such a long word that you have to weirdly abbreviate it as "Xtian?"

Xmas as a replacement for Christmas comes from Χριστός and usage in English dates back to the 1500s. Admittedly the use for Christian [sic] was a bit lazy, but I was not attempting to make any point.

I enjoyed Helianthus' take on it though - goes to show whatever you say can be reinterpreted by analysts to provide a depth of meaning you never intended ;)

People abbreviate Christmas as Xmas. I feel that, for consistency, it should be Xian, rather than Xtian, but Xtian seems to be the standard.

Incidentally, I enjoy that you used the slur "Christain." alt.atheism?

When I see the string "Xian", I read it as a Chinese word, and it sounds completely unlike "Christian". This is a problem.

Same, here. It's really just the consistency I like about it. Or we could switch to Xtmas.

Are "constant", "variable", "integer" and "is not" so long? Not really. People just like shortcuts.

I read it as rhetorical device somehow. It evokes something of careless contempt for artificial or overbearing crude faith.

Except Christians were the first ones to replace Christ's name with X, the first letter in the Greek Χριστός.

yeah sure, but if he had said Χριστός that'd be obscure formal respect.

I don't understand the point you're trying to make here. My point was that Χριστός has been abbreviated to "X" for thousands of years without any implication of disrespect. I don't see how the fact that writing out the Greek word implies formal respect is supposed to disagree with me.

In that case, I don't understand the point you were trying to make by saying "Except Christians were the first ones to replace Christ's name with X, the first letter in the Greek Χριστός."

It sounded like you were trying to disagree with my assertion that Xtian had a certain rhetorical intent, but you did it by bringing in a completely different rhetorical construct.

I do know the origins of the X abbreviation.

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