"The X in Xmas is a substitute cross for the
Crucifix of
Christ"
-
Mark E. Smith
From the song '
No Christmas For John Quays' on
The Fall's first
LP, 1979's
Live at the Witch Trials, It also appears in a far longer form as the final track on the live LP
Totale's Turns (It's Now Or Never)
The 'John Quays' of the song is a phoenetic substitute for
heroin junkies (pronounced juhn-keys - The two actually sound quite
interchangeable when Mark sings it), to which the song actually refers to.
However,
sid seems to make a more convincing point than Smith...
When I was younger (
So much younger than today) I always thought that the 'X' stood for 'cross', which was the logical progression from 'criss', (i.e. criss-cross, which is not too dissimilar from
Christopher Cross) thereby making the word sort of 'criss-mas' by
proxy, which is phonetically correct.