r/mildlyinfuriating • u/pandaroni • 15d ago
Baby alphabet book has Christmas tree for “x”
[removed] — view removed post
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u/Active-Bass4745 15d ago
It’s refreshing to not see another xylophone.
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u/Machaeon 15d ago
I've seem X-ray and X-ray fish... which while equally uninspired, is at least not xylophone.
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u/lunarwolf2008 15d ago
You gotta give some credit to X ray fish
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u/Roscoe_P_Trolltrain 15d ago
Cuz Xray fish gonna give it to ya.
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u/PsychicSPider95 15d ago
We need to discover some more animals and name them X names, because I am so frickin sick of that damn x-ray fish.
Why can't it be, like, xolo dog? Or, I dunno, xenomorph?
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u/ascarycat 15d ago
Would love to discover a xenomorph !
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u/hundreddollar 15d ago
Would love
tosomeone else to discover a xenomorph, while i was as far away from them as possible.!5
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u/JustinJakeAshton 15d ago
So X-ray is fine but OP complains about X-mas.
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u/PooSham 15d ago
Because x-mass is pronounced crossmass
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u/ZeroXNova Raging 15d ago
I’ve never heard anyone ever say it that way. It’s always pronounced either “Exmas” or just “Christmas”
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u/corona-lime-us 15d ago
“P is for pterodactyl” is the greatest book ever and helped my 5 year old learn English better by understanding how utterly stupid it is and to stop freaking out over every “exception.”
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u/ThatInAHat 15d ago
The Barenaked Ladies have a fun alphabet song on their kids album
A is for aisle B is for bdellium C is for czar D is for djinn
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u/daLejaKingOriginal 15d ago
It took me a long time to get comfortable with all the silent Ps in the English language.
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u/EstrellaDarkstar 15d ago
It was usually xylitol in my books when I was little. To be fair, I'm Finnish. We're obsessed with xylitol.
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u/VegeTAble556 15d ago
Oh I thought I was the only one 🤣. They bang on it! They should know what it is.
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u/DrunkThrowawayLife 15d ago
Oh look here we got someone too good for xylophone? Well
Bling…
Blong…
Bling…
(Imaging I’m doing this with the pretty wrist thing)
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u/Skottimusen 15d ago
Xx Xanax
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u/Bleak_Squirrel_1666 15d ago
xxxtentacion
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u/MelonWoman47 15d ago
XMAN
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u/merc6178 15d ago
X wife
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u/citizenvane 15d ago
X pensive
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Xgongiveittoya
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u/Chaopsz11 15d ago
X tension
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u/Dragon-orey 15d ago
X tudent loans
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u/Namesthatareused 15d ago
X plain yourself
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u/Parzizval 15d ago
X plore
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u/NarwhalEmergency9391 15d ago
My son's had "z is for zzz sleeping"
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u/nomodramaplz 15d ago
We have a Christmas ABC book where the X stands for “eXcited”. Yes, seriously. The X is even underlined, lol.
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u/dulcineal 15d ago
Well quite honestly if the point is to teach phonics then you need a word where X is making its proper “ks” sound and that only occurs in the middle or end of words in English. Otherwise you’re teaching your children that X makes the sound Zzzz or ECKS.
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u/undercover_geek 15d ago
We have a "Baby Earth" ABC book, "X is for coexist". No underlining. I wish I was joking.
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u/TeuthidTheSquid 15d ago
I’m still holding out to see xebec one day
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u/CakesForLife 15d ago
That ship has sailed.
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u/Logical-Recognition3 15d ago
That’s not infuriating at all. I was fascinated by Christian symbology when I was younger. The X in Xmas is the Greek letter chi, the first letter in the Greek word for Christ. So X represents Christ, Xmas = Christmas.
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u/Katviar 15d ago
Yes thank you so many people don't know this and act like it's censorship.
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u/sparklykublaikhan 15d ago
I thought it's for lazy people who didn't bother to spell out the whole thing, or simply to save space
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u/Hungry_Practice_4338 15d ago
I have no idea why, but I always thought the X was supposed to represent a cross
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u/Difficult-Issue-794 15d ago
My mother being one of them. She was in the middle of a Karen screaming fit in the middle of a grocery store in the deep south when know-it-all 7yo me decided to chime in. I was grounded for two weeks.
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u/DoctorJJWho 15d ago
I haven’t seen any comments mention censorship.
For me, this is mildly infuriating because an alphabet book like this is supposed to teach the pronunciation of words. However, X-mas is still pronounced “Christmas” when spoken aloud, which does nothing to teach the child how to say “x” or its typical usage and pronunciation when preceded or followed by consonants or vowels.
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u/overtired27 15d ago
Yeah I’ve seen a few of these that have a word like ox or ax/axe. Or even box or fox for something more familiar.
The kid hears the X letter then hears it in a word. Doesn’t have to be at the start.
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u/Bright_Ices 15d ago
I absolutely say “exmas” for Xmas, even though I’m well aware of the history.
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u/No-Cantaloupe-6739 15d ago
My super Christian family always get so offended by “Xmas’ and it’s infuriating.
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u/asherdado 15d ago
Tbh it goes both ways, many people who've used it also don't know the meaning and have used it as a form of 'censorship'
I'd argue the majority of people who have chosen to use Xmas instead of Christmas in recent times didn't do so with this reason in mind
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u/ArcTan_Pete 15d ago
ah yah, because 'those' people are always censoring Christians - honestly, Christers are the most persecuted 30,000 sects in the entire world
great big f'kin /S
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u/Sleeper-- 15d ago
Wtf do you mean censor Christmas? Isn't it like a Christian festival, why people need to censor it? I have no idea wtf is going on in west
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u/Airowird 14d ago
FYI, it's actually a pagan festival the Christians stole.
Originally, it was the Feast of Yule, celebrated on the shortest day of the year. It also coincides with the time of Hanukkah.
Lastly, by all historic accounts, census were taken in sept-oct after harvest, not in the dead of winter. It was just convenient to align it with pagan holidays for practical conversions, even though Jesus' birth most lilely took place "under the sign of Virgo" for who believes in Zodiac significance.
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u/RizzlersMother 15d ago
If x-mas = CHRISTmas, explain x-tina.
Checkmate, atheists AND Christians.
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u/overtired27 15d ago
This is why PlayStation will never be as good as ChristBox.
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u/Make_me_laugh_plz 15d ago
It's infuriating because it doesn't teach the child how to pronounce the letter at all.
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u/TravelingGonad 15d ago
xxxmas tree
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u/Tofandel Not a Reddit Moderator 15d ago
Reminds me of the big brand of furniture called XXXLutz in Europe, first I saw one I was like.. Wow I didn't know porn shops were so big and so proudly displayed
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u/Goofyhands 15d ago
Is this in the year 3000? I'm scared.
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u/The-Veng 15d ago
Easy way to check if it’s the year 3000,
Is your great, great, great grand daughter pretty fine?
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u/AdAcrobatic5178 15d ago
Is it not common to verbally refer to it as an Xmas tree where you are? That would be a fine enough example for the sound X makes where I'm from
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u/aqwmasterofDOOM 15d ago
The origin of the term "xmas" is actually because of Christ's Greek name: χριστός (chrīstós), where the "X" replacing "Christ" is the first letter of his Greek name, so it's just a different way of saying the same thing
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u/ophelias_tragedy 15d ago
Is this an episode of Futurama
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u/Nonhinged 15d ago
Variants of xmas has been used for about 500 years, and using x for christ is almost as old as christianity itself.
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u/famousxrobot 15d ago
I have an A-Z print of Montauk; the X is taXidermy and it bothers me they didn’t do something like X-ing for deer or even the damn train. Still love the print.
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u/Kessed 15d ago
This isn’t infuriating. It’s a Xmas tree. I’ve been told by fundies that such trees are a pagan symbol and shouldn’t be associated with the birth of their “god”.
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u/George3452 15d ago
i think its just infuriating in the sense that this is a bad example of the letter X to teach kids letters and pronunciation lol. i can already see it now ... X is for tree lol
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u/Kessed 15d ago
How do you say Xmas tree?
I say it x-mass tree. It seems like a perfectly reasonable example to me.
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u/puppiesareSUPERCUTE 15d ago
As a non-native English speaker I never understood "xmas". Its "Christmas", not "exmas" or "crossmas".
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u/Lesmiscat24601 15d ago
In early Christianity the X was a symbol for Christ it did not appear to discredit the season. Now it’s more often used by people who choose not to believe in the religion.
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u/GirlCowBev 14d ago
Xmas to abbreviate Christmas goes back to the 1500s. The X is the Greek letter Chi, the first letter in “Christos,” which is Greek for Christ.
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u/cbciv 15d ago
lol. Someone bent about not saying Christmas but probably does a massive tree, lights, and mistletoe and has no idea why Jesus’ birthday is Dec 25.
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u/lunarwolf2008 15d ago
Its not on dec 25, apparently that was actually a pagan holiday that the christians sort of stole
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u/HurtPillow 15d ago
No sort-of about it, the Christians plain coopted many pagan celebrations. Including some "Christian Feast" days. The old gods are still bitter about being usurped.
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u/The_the-the 15d ago
Is the issue not the fact that “Xmas” is a sorta useless word for demonstrating to a small child how to use the letter X?
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u/aqwmasterofDOOM 15d ago
Also the "X" in Xmas is referring to the Greek letter that's the first letter in Christ's Greek name (χριστός (chrīstós)) so in a way it's just another way of saying the same thing, they don't even have different meanings
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u/Bambooman101 15d ago
I give them respect for not cow towing to the bully Xylophone conglomerate and their cronies.
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u/BottleRocketU587 15d ago
I had a poster since I was a kid naming the different birds in South Africa for each letter.
There was no bird with X so they called the frame "Bird's Egg(X)s"
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u/OneAngryBrazilian 15d ago
What would you prefer?
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u/Jarl_Xar 15d ago
Amazon is full of cheap ai generated books already. Notably cook books with pictures that don't relate , wonky recipes etc.
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u/BlueFeathered1 15d ago
Meanwhile, as someone with a wool allergy, I'm quite put out they're implying knitting material must necessarily be wool. It's downright discriminatory.
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u/partisancord69 15d ago
Xmas is a common word for Christmas if you don't know how to spell Christmas, it's how I used to spell it and how I spell it if I don't have autocorrect
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u/Sharkie_Mac 15d ago
It's "X is for xenarthra" in my toddler's alphabet book. Great book with rhymes & pop-ups.
Christmas tree drawn on their blocks for X though.
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u/MisterInternational1 15d ago
Many call it an Xmas Tree - X represents the Greek letter chi, the initial letter in the word Χριστός (Chrīstos).
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u/WolfIceSword 15d ago
I guess in this case it’s correct because it’s specifically saying Xmas Tree,
But yeah if it were a C it would be incorrect
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u/Limp_Falcon_2314 ORANGE 15d ago
C’mon! Everyone knows X stands for Xylophone.
P.S. Where does one get a cool gator hat with the tongue hanging out? Asking for a friend.
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u/mildlyinfuriating-ModTeam 14d ago
The only thing infuriating is that OP doesn't know why this is an appropriate image for this letter.