When Did This Phrase Come About?

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"X" many more sleeps until.......

i never remember hearing this until about 10 years ago, i certainly never heard it when i was a kid in the mid 60's

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[+3] - djjd62 - 12/21/2012it was the "sleeps" part, not the xmas part

@djjd62,

I'm pretty sure we invented it. More than 10 years ago...mmmm....let's see...24 or 25 years ago.

You're welcome or I'm sorry about that, depending.

Razz

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@djjd62,

I never heard it until about 2 minutes ago.

1 Reply

@Ticomaya,

ditto

1 Reply

@edgarblythe,

My little one would very excitedly ask "When's Christmas?"

We'd answer "four more sleeps" etc...

He didn't understand "Next Tuesday" exactly, but he grasped the concept of "sleeps."

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@Joeblow,

Joeblow wrote:

I'm pretty sure we invented it.

you're in the Oxford!

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/sleep

Quote:

[count noun] informal (typically in the context of anticipating a forthcoming event) a night, or a night’s sleep:
two more sleeps till I fly to LA

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@djjd62,

I always said that to my kids when they were little, and my oldest is now 32, so it's been around for at least that long.

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@djjd62,

Christ and the cross. The X being the cross. I'm certain that Xmas has been around as long as I've been around if not longer.

According to wikipedia, there is an illustration dating back to at least 1922 with the term Xmas:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xmas

1 Reply

@ehBeth,

The Oxford! very sheshe

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@cherrie,

Whaaaaaat? You mean I didn't invent it?

1 Reply

@Joeblow,

Sorry, but maybe I did.

2 Replies

@cherrie,

I think maybe you did.

We should write the Oxford Dictionary people.

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@cherrie,

I used to hear "four days and a wakeup". It was a military way of stating estimated date of separation.

1 Reply

@Joeblow,

We should too.
But maybe we should wait a bit and see if anyone else said it before that.

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@roger,

I've never heard that one before.

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@tsarstepan,

it was the "sleeps" part, not the xmas part

2 Replies

@djjd62,

The abbreviation Xmas for the word Christmas is of Greek origin. Since the word for Christ in the Greek language is Xristos, which starts with the letter "X," they started putting the X in place of Christ and came up with the short form for the word Christmas

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@djjd62,

It was standard in my childhood....late fifties and early sixties. Used for children to help them understand how far away something was.

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@dlowan,

hmm, the first folks i can remember saying it were french canadian, so i assumed it was a cultural thing, now it seems to be across the cultural spectrum but only in selected areas

the other night a news reader (canada) said it and she was probably a kid in the 80's, i wonder what determined who said "sleeps" and who didn't, could it be a commonwealth thing, we have some canadians and an australian who know of it, but two americans are not aware

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@djjd62,

djjd62 wrote:

it was the "sleeps" part, not the xmas part

My bad. Too much vodka and Starbucks liquor last night kind of addled my reading sense....

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