Xmas Is Not About Taking Christ Out of Christmas

December 5, 2013 at 2:00 am Chad Upton 5 comments

By Chad Upton | Editor

Shortening Christmas to Xmas has been used since the 16th century and it’s not an attempt by secular culture to remove Christ from Christmas. It can actually be traced back to religious documents themselves and has history in etymology and practical applications.

Here’s an advertisement from a 1922 issue of the Ladies Home Journal:

Before the 16th century, Christ was frequently written as Xρ. Xρ kind of looks like Greek doesn’t it? It is. The Greek word for Christ is Χριστός, well it actually means “anointed” but it translates to English as Christ. The shortened version; Xρ, is just the first two letters.

Of course, the new testament was written in Greek, so it’s easy to see how this all started. Later, Xρ was further shortened to just X — that’s how we get Xmas. The X was also used in “Xtian”, a short form of “Christian”.

But, why not just type or write out Christmas or Christian?

Back when printing presses were first developed, typesetters had limited space to work with and a limited number of characters available, so they saved characters whenever possible. Although the abbreviations existed before the moveable type printing press, the abbreviations became much more popular because of them. Some of the most popular documents to print were bibles, so abbreviations were very important to printing bibles efficiently and cost effectively.

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Sources: wikipedia (xmas), Christian Resource Institute

Entry filed under: Uncategorized. Tags: bible, chirstmas, christ, christmas, greek, moveable type, xmas.

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5 Comments Add your own

1. paulettemotzko | December 5, 2013 at 2:13 am

Reblogged this on Totally Inspired Mind-Where Positive Minds Congregate.

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2. Richard Abraham | December 5, 2013 at 4:40 am

The Bible does not give the date of Jesus’ birth, nor does it say that we should celebrate his birthday. As McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopedia states: “The observance of Christmas is not of divine appointment, nor is it of NT [New Testament] origin.”

Instead, an examination of the history of Christmas exposes its roots in pagan religious rites. The Bible shows that we offend God if we try to worship him in a way that he does not approve of.—Exodus 32:5-7.

Read more -http://bit.ly/1dROGQf

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- 3. Dolores Hayes | December 24, 2013 at 1:03 am
  
  I could not have put it better! Most of the rituals, etc., that we now think of as a “Christian” Xmas are nothing of the kind! Christmas was basically invented by the Romans who conquered Gallic and Briton areas of their realm (present day England and France) and lured their subjects into cooperation by melding Roman holidays (mainly Saturnalia, or the feast of Saturn) with Celtic feasts surrounding the Solstice. It worked and was later combined with figures such as “St. Nicholas” from Turkey and the Germanic “Tannenbaum” or “Christmas tree”, neither of which had anything to do with the Christian holiday. It made conquered people happy and that’s how it all came to be known as a “Christian” holiday.
  
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4. Charles van Blommestein | December 19, 2013 at 1:00 pm

This matter can be divisive when it is taken to extremes.

I propose for everyone to put-down our White-out pens, stop with reaching on our keyboards for the [backspace-key], stop editing our daily grammar, wishing others the Politically-biased “Happy Holidays”, etc.

FIGHT THE TREND….. Everyone go out and wish others a Merry CHRISTmas!

I know and apply The Reason for the Season.
I am Santa Claus and proudly-proclaim my devotion to bestow these blessings wherever I go-ho-ho.

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5. Dolores Hayes | December 24, 2013 at 1:07 am

HAPPY SOLSTICE! You can’t bully me into a fake semblance of Christianity! I’ll celebrate as I choose, according to the FIRST AMENDMENT!

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