For the past couple of years my younger kids have been big fans of Barbapapa, a French children’s book character from the ’70s who is lately enjoying a revival of popularity here in Sweden. I think he and his kind are a little creepy, but they’re ultimately harmless, so I do buy a Barbapapa book from time to time.

Yesterday I got a package from the bookseller that contained Lär dig engelska med Barbapapa, a “first words in English” reader that I thought might be fun for Tage and Petra. We cracked it open at bedtime, and it was pretty much like every other book of its kind, very “A is for apple, B is for bear,” until we got to the final page, where “X”, bafflingly, was for “Xmas”.

Now, there’s no arguing that “X” is a toughie, and once you’ve blown through “xylophone” and “x-ray,” your options are pretty well shot. Still, “Xmas”?? That’s not even really a word, and it’s certainly not the proper English name for the holiday. By and large, I don’t have any objection to the abbreviation, but to teach kids that jul equals Xmas is just too much of a stretch for me.

Thank goodness the book was a translation, and not originally written in Swedish. This way, at least, we can blame the French.