Day 2 – Christmas or Xmas?
“And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.” Matthew 1:21
Is it okay to say Merry Xmas?
Christmas is also sometimes known as Xmas. Some people don’t think it’s correct to call Christmas ‘Xmas’ as that takes the ‘Christ’ (Jesus) out of Christmas.
But that isn’t right! The word Christmas comes from Christ-Mass, the Church service that celebrated the birth of Jesus.
In the Greek language and alphabet, the letter that looks like an X is the Greek letter chi / Χ (pronounced ‘kye’ which rhymes with ‘eye’). This is the first letter of the Greek word for Christ. Christos (χριστός), which means ‘the anointed one’ or ‘the chosen one’.
Jesus is called by many names such as the Christ, Jesus Christ, Christ Jesus or just Christ as a way of recognizing that we believe Jesus is God’s son. He is THE Anointed One.
The early Christian church used the first two letters of Christos in the Greek alphabet ‘chi’ and ‘rho’ to create a monogram (symbol) to represent the name of Jesus. This looks like an X with a small p on the top.
Monks and other early Christian writers also used X as a ‘shorthand’ for Jesus or Christ in documents, as the words Jesus or Christ were used a lot. Using X instead of Jesus or Christ saved them a lot of time and ink.
Shortened divine names or titles are known as ‘nomina sacras’ and have been used for many hundreds of years.
It’s also thought some people used them as they believed the full names were holy. They thought they were unworthy to write them. Using an abbreviation was respectful to them.
So, X has been used to mean Jesus/Christ for over 1000 years; and it’s also completely fine to use Xmas to mean Christmas; but it should still be pronounced ‘Christmas’ rather than ‘ex-mas’.
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