XMAS, annual midwinter holiday of economic rebirth, preceded by the twenty-four shopping days of Advert. Xmas is celebrated in roughly two phases:
- Xmas Day (Dec. 25), when gifts are given.
- Boxing Day (Dec. 26), when gifts are taken back to the store.
The tradition of Xmas is rooted in deep antiquity when the winter months were a time of scarcity and hardship. The word itself is a portmanteau of exi mercatus, a Vulgar Latin colloquialism meaning, approximately, “flee the marketplace.” However, the concept was almost certainly plundered by the Romans from the tribal peoples of Northern Europe.
In our post-industrial society, Xmas has lost its former agrarian associations and has become an entirely religious holiday, which is to say an economic one. The onset of winter with its attendant Seasonal Affective Disorder means that consumer activity is dangerously low at the turning of a new fiscal year. The artificial demand created by the Xmas season plays a critical role in keeping our economic system just shy of collapse from year to year.
Xmas is often conflated with Christmas, a Roman festival to the pagan god Saturn with which it happens to coincide, though the two are otherwise entirely dissimilar. In recent years a popular movement aimed at “putting the X back in Xmas” has largely succeeded in rehabilitating the observance of Xmas to its proper commercial focus.
—Encyclopedia Blipvertica.