The Narrow Path Ministries

I have heard some people strongly object to the spelling "Xmas", affirming that it takes "Christ" out of "Christmas" and replaces it with an unknown quantity. But is this true? I think not.

The word Christ in Greek upper-case letters is ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ. The first letter of this Greek word is "chi". This letter, within a word, is pronounced the same as the "ch" in "Christ." In the early church, XP, the first two letters of ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ were often used as an abbreviation of ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ, or sometimes the X alone. (the "P" in Greek is the letter "rho" and is pronounced like an "r").

If you attend, or have attended a traditional, liturgical church, you may have seen the symbol ☧
This symbol, being a special arrangement of the letters "XP", represents "Christ".

So since the Greek letter "X" is also an abbreviation for "Christ", you need not feel guilty in abbreviating "Christmas" as "Xmas".

You may be technically right but i do think the common intent is to take Christ out of Christmas.

We can use the 'technically right' to create an interesting conversation starter in the right situation. Plus, we can just refuse to be offended by people's 'naughty' motivation for X'ing out Christ... knowing that they're not technically eliminating Him. In any case, our job as Christians is not to complain about what's wrong with the world at Christmas time, but to share the beauty of what is now in the world through Christ (there's a good quote in that regard which I can't think of off the top of my head).

Depending on who I am with, i alternately say "happy holidays," or "merry Christmas." Even though the history of the holiday is the celebration of Jesus' birth, I don't presume that other people are celebrating his birth. Any more than I think Gentiles are celebrating Hanukah. When you think about it, it is pretty bizarro what Christmas is in our culture. Can you imagine if Ghandi's birthday was celebrated with mass commercialization, and indulgence? We are close enough historically to his life that we would see the absurdity. But jesus has become more of an icon than a person, and so the absurdity of celebrating the birth of a criminal and religious fanatic born on the wrong side of town who led a non-violent coup against the government seems totally normal to people.


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