Writing Xmas isn't "taking Christ out of Christmas," it's shorthand

Xmas is not a non-religious version of “Christmas”. The “X” is actually indicating the Greek letter “Chi”, which is short for the Greek χριστός, meaning “Christ”. So “Xmas” and “Christmas” are equivalent in every way except their lettering.

In fact, although writing guides such as those issued by the New York Times; the BBC; The Christian Writer’s Manual of Style; and Oxford Press discourage the use of Xmas in formal writing, at one time, it was a very popular practice, particularly with religious scribes, who are thought to have started the whole “Xmas” thing in the first place. Indeed, the practice of using the symbol “X” in place of Christ’s name has been going on amongst religious scholars for at least 1000 years.

Eventually, this shorthand trick spread to non-religious writings where nearly everywhere “Christ” appeared in a word, the Greek Chi would replace that part of the word. For example, in the 17th and 18th centuries, there are numerous non-religious documents containing instances of “Xine”, which was a common spelling for someone whose name was Christine.

Lying to kids about drugs is a shitty deterrent

It is perhaps the greatest fallacy hoisted upon the peoples of civilized society that there is an inherent danger to recreational drug use. 

Perhaps the reason that anti drug campaigns fail so miserably is that they all lie. Drugs are awesome. They make you feel great and they don’t seem to cause the advertised harm, at least in the short term.  Whenever someone decides to try “just one little hit” as an experiment they undoubtedly learn that everything they’ve ever been told about that drug is horseshit.  

We tell kids their hearts will go into tachycardia and possibly explode if they try cocaine. While I’m sure that may be true for a small number of cases—overdoses notwithstanding—the (purely anecdotal, I grant you) experiences in which I’ve partaken, surrounded by rock musicians and strippers, proved that the experience is mostly limited to feeling really good, really sexy, and really talkative. Imagine the worst day you’ve had recently, and then imagine the best day. Quantify the difference emotionally between those two and add that to an average feeling and you pretty much have a mathematical understanding of how cocaine (and most stimulants, really in their own way, affects you.

We tell kids if they smoke marijuana they’ll burn their brains out and sit around being worthless and stupid. Inserting more of my anecdotal experience here, I can tell you that the valedictorian and salutatorian of my high school, and the class president of my third year of college were all huge pot-heads. This doesn’t mean that they weren’t holding themselves back—maybe they would have been über-geniuses if they hadn’t smoked—but they didn’t seem like lazy losers to me. 

As for Meth, I’m convinced that if cocaine were easily available and cheap that nobody would mess with that nasty stuff. In this same vein I place heroin, were morphine readily available. 

Adolescents are biologically programmed to be difficult and rebellious. When we lie to those kind of people about drugs (and exaggeration and omitting positives is still lying) it makes them less inclined to believe anything. Tell a kid he’ll get addicted from one snort of cocaine and when he doesn’t he’ll doubt that that same snort of heroin could kill him, which it most certainly can (especially if the cocaine is still in his system).  

Drug policy should be based on education. Drugs should be decriminalized because after all, ruining someone’s life over possessing a recreational amount that we were yesterday lying to about the affects of that very substance isn’t a productive way to discourage experimentation.