Merry x – mass!

Merry X-Mass!

In 2022 I wrote The Autism of Gxd – months later, imagine my irritation when Elon Musk stole my X! 

But back there before the world’s richest man purloined it, why did I write X – Not God but Gxd?

For a start, there were the negative reasons – for someone with a history like mine, living in a Christendom as we do, it seemed to me that the word “God” contained simply too much baggage – how to keep and yet let go of all that word’s power for good and ill? 

From somewhere, Gxd emerged – a paradoxical Gxd after God, rich with the theological heft of that then pure symbol, X. How many meanings of x can you trace? X the unknown of the equation; x marking the spot of buried treasure; x the kiss; x the chiasmic symbol chi, for those familiar with Greek; possibly my favourite, suggested to me during an open mic audience interaction, was x standing for ex-directory! 

And all these tropes are valid in Gxd. 

When I was in a certain rather rigid phase of evolution, I frowned upon “Xmas” because we should preserve Christ in “Christmas.”

Now I believe X is a fitting symbol for Christ crucified in our times and I want to reclaim it from its cynical (post-Twitter) anonymity. 

Merry Xmas (X – mass) to you in the cosmic and glorious autism of Gxd! Why autism? Ah, read on next week – or buy the book!