Posts tagged ‘xmas’
Xmas Is Not About Taking Christ Out of Christmas
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
The Origin of Boxing Day
December 26th (today) is Boxing Day.
If you’re American, you might see it on your calendar every year and wonder what it is. If you live in the UK, Canada, Australia or most other commonwealth countries, then you probably get the day off and don’t really know why.
It is a popular day for sporting events in these countries, but its relation to the sport of boxing is only legend. In fact, the name is derived from an old tradition of servants and housekeepers collected their gifts (boxes) on the day after Christmas, in exchange for reliable service throughout the year.
In Europe, it dates back to the Middle Ages, although the exact origin is not known. It was traditionally a time when wealthy people gave seasonal gifts to less fortunate people. Today, the holiday is almost entirely secular and for most people it identifies the start of after Christmas sales and shopping sprees.
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Big thanks to Chris and Jeanne for sharing this secret!
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