Merry Xmas!
After reading Wayne’s recent posts of Christmas-related topics, it occurred to me that it might be good to clarify the expression Merry Xmas. I sometimes hear people complain that the X in Xmas takes Christ out of Christmas. Actually, the X has long been an abbreviation of Christ since it represents the first Greek letter of Хριστος and resembles its form more closely than “ch” does. It might be more evident if Christ were commonly written as Xrist, or Xmas were written as Chmas.
posted by Dan Sindlinger at 12:24 PM
2 Comments:
I had to laugh when I first learned this, as growing up, I was taught that Xmas was a pagan way to "take Christ out" of Christmas. Too funny to learn the truth (in light of our hyper-sensitivity to being attacked by our "evil" culture, at least those of us in the fundamentalist world)--lol.
I had to laugh when I first learned this, as growing up, I was taught that Xmas was a pagan way to "take Christ out" of Christmas.
Well, I think for many people who do not know the history of usage of X as an abbreviation for xristos, the "x" may service that function that you were taught. I was taught the same thing you were. Of course, our teachers didn't live very far apart, eh?!
If we did a survey of people who use the spelling "Xmas," it would be interesting to find out how many simply viewed "X" as an abbreviation-- perhaps to make Christmas sound less Christian and less offensive to people of other religions--and how many used the "X" as it was originally used, to abbreviate the Greek word for Christ.
My wife and I are happy to put up a Christmas tree each year. We never think of the fact that the Christmas tree originated as pagan symbol from northern Europe. The pagan meaning has been totally lost for us. But it is important for some people and I respect them for not wanting to do something which they consider pagan.
Sounds like the old question of whether or not to eat meat which has been offered to idols, eh?
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