Shedding Light on the X in Xmas

During the holiday season we continually hear the complaints and responses of people as they notice the “Xmas” greeting in place of the all familiar “Christmas.” To many uninformed people this is an indication of disrespect and an attempt to remove the word Christ from the greeting making it a non-religious name. Others profess that those people who use the “X” in place of the word Christ are at best a lazy batch of people who are deliberately attempting to secularize the celebration of Jesus Christ’s birth. This would seem to mean that society as a whole was attempting to cross out or eliminate the word Christ from our vocabulary. Folks according to research conducted nothing like this is even remotely truthful or verified.

When I was born my official name was Joseph Raymond and on occasions throughout my life I have often been referred to as JR. It is still the same ole’ me but just a shortened version of my assigned name. As we can gather from the introductory paragraph people seem to express mortification at seeing Christ’s name being dropped from the greeting and being replaced by the symbol X. What is that you say? There is simply no letter X in Christmas?

In witnessing the use of this letter X we must realize that there is a long and sacred historical significance assigned to the symbol X within the context of Christ’s name, none of which even slightly indicates disrespect. As an example, how many times have you driven down the road and glanced at the rear of an automobile in front of you and noticed a fish symbol on the car? We have come to recognize that symbol as meaning the driver is a member of the Christian community. American churches have adopted and employed this symbol of a fish not out of thin air but as a result of its acronym. The English word “Fish” is actually translated to the Greek word “ichthus”. In using the word “Fish” for representing Christians most Christian churches have used of the starting letters from the Greek language phrase “Jesus Christ the Son of God and Savior.” By taking the first letters of each of these words and putting them together they will than spell fish in Greek. In the same sense we must explore the Greek language again in an attempt to understand the “X” used in the holiday greetings.

First, it isn’t the “X” which is placed into Christmas but it is actually our very own English represented letter “X” which represents the first letter in the Greek name for Christ. According to the New Testament the proper Greek version of Christ is Christos. Therefore the initial letter in the Greek word Christos would be translated in our alphabet as our letter “X”. As a result the church has adopted the letter X as a type of shorthand in writing Christ’s name.

As we can see it would appear that the term “Xmas” is not a non-religious variation for “Christmas” but actually an indication of the Greek letter “Chi” meaning “Christ”. That would make “Xmas” and “Christmas” equivalent in all ways other than by their lettering. This process at one time was a very popular practice employed by the religious scribes while using “Xmas” as a shortcut for Christmas when writing for the church. It was these commissioned scribes who began using the “Xmas” wording in the first place. Since those times the process has moved onward towards our current practice involving the use of the “X” symbol in place of Christ’s name. It is still very popular amongst the various religious scholars and amply employed in their writings today.

In time this shortcut method began to spread among the non-religious writers as well with its use being interchanged everywhere the word “Christ” would appear. As a side note, it was also popular in the 17th and 18th centuries to write the word “Xine” as a shortened version of Christine simply by using the biblical scribes “X” for Christ shortcut. An elderly associate whom I once know had attended a Chicago Theological Seminary where he was taught that the “X” stood for Christ in all their documents that they studied and that “Xmas” was therefore a valid abbreviation for Christmas.

So in conclusion one should not become upset by the use of “Xmas” in place of Christmas as it is merely a short, convenient method to abbreviate the word Christmas. There is nothing disrespectful in believing that different versions of the same thing exist however one should never accept the idea that being of closed minded is proper and correct. In today’s politically correct world some companies have instructed their employees to wish customers a “Happy Holiday” rather than using the words “Merry Christmas”. In either case, whether it be “Xmas” or Christmas being expressed as the greeting for the holiday is ultimately better than the alternative of “Happy Holidays”.

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