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Xmas Or Christmas
Who put the X in Christmas?
Christmas is the most celebrated holiday in the Western world and most of us know roughly why it is celebrated but not many people actually know the origin of the name and other names that have been used.
The world generally used for the holiday today is quite obvious in origin. Christmas is a spin from Christ’s Mass. A day of mass to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. The actual date of Jesus’s birth is contested but people widely accept December 25th as a symbolic day.
Chrit’s Mass derives from a Middle English term Christemasse and an old English term Cristes mæsse. Cristes mæsse is thought to have been first recorded in 1038. The word “Cristes” derives from the Greek “christos” and mæsse is from the latin term,missa.
The term Xmas is also an accepted and often used abbreviation and often seen as a modern alternative but surprisingly this actually can be tracked back to the 16th century.
Some people have seen the X as a negative thing - I once heard that it was a reference to satan - however this is not so! In early versions of the Greek New Testament the letter X, pronounced ‘chi’ in greek, is the first letter of Christ. The letter X has been known to be an abbreviation for Christ since the middle of the 16th century. Hence the term Xmas!
4 Responses to “Xmas Or Christmas”
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December 12th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Thank you for the explanation of the origin of “Xmas.” Every year I get angry letters from readers about the use of “Xmas” in some of our Christmas coloring pages, accusing me of taking Christ out of Christmas. I never knew how to answer them until now!
December 14th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
It is a negitive on Christmas. Why would any X out Christ in Christmas because that is exactly what you do when you use “xmas” You X Christ out of Christmas plain and simple.
Christ is what Christmas is all about and I say we use Christmas instead of XMAS.
December 16th, 2008 at 12:34 am
“Xmas” is a classic example of etymological evolution of a word. In the same way that I would not fly an American flag upside down, which is not anti-American at all but rather a distress signal (or a political statement meaning our country is in trouble) because most people just don’t know what it means. The same applies to “Xmas”, although I would argue that most companies or people who use it are not using it knowing that the “X” is an abbreviation for “Christ”, they are using it to pander to politically correct, anti-Christian groups.
December 16th, 2008 at 8:18 am
I would agree that we should use Christ instead of X to avoid annoying Christians who don’t know what X stands for. But for me, it’s not the words but the spirit of the season that matters.
Words are just words. They are easy to write down or saying, practicing the true meaning of Christmas (or Xmas) is another story entirely.