Christmas or Xmas

It is getting closer and closer to one of the most important days of the year for Christians: Christmas. This is not only a time for Christians to celebrate “the Word became flesh”, for some it is also a time to battle those who want to “take Christ out of Christmas”. One of the tasks is to voice out our objection of using the word “Χmas” in place of “Christmas”.

It is commonly understood that “people have taken Christ out of Christmas and replaced him with an unknown X” (since X is the symbol for unknown quantity in mathematics). Therefore, as Christians, we are told not to use it, we are reminded that the world is threatening our faith and blasphemy our Lord by using the “X” word.

However, it is so unfortunate that such view is far from the true and reflects only how we get worked up easily about things that are either largely irrelevant, or incidental, or that we do not really understand.

According to the dictionary: The word Christmas originated as a compound meaning "Christ's Mass". It is derived from the Middle English Christemasse and Old English Cristes mæsse, a phrase first recorded in 1038. "Cristes" is from Greek Christos and "mæsse" is from Latin missa (the holy mass).

On the other hand, the Greek writing of Christos is Χριστος. The first letter of the Greek “Χ” is transliterated to “Ch” in English. In another word, “Xmas” is derived from using the first Greek letter of Χριστος (Christ) and the “mas”. In the early church, the first two Greek letter of Christ “Χρ” were used to create the chi-rho monogram that symbolize Christ. Literally “Xmas” is exactly means “Christmas”.

According to Dennis Bratcher, the Director of The Christian Resource Institute:

“The exact origin of the single letter X for Christ cannot be pinpointed with certainty. Some claim that it began in the first century AD along with the other symbols, but evidence is lacking. Others think that it came into widespread use by the thirteenth century along with many other abbreviations and symbols for Christianity and various Christian ideas that were popular in the Middle Ages. However, again, the evidence is sparse.

 In any case, by the fifteenth century Xmas emerged as a widely used symbol for Christmas. In 1436 Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press with moveable type. In the early days of printing typesetting was done by hand and was very tedious and expensive. As a result, abbreviations were common. In religious publications, the church began to use the abbreviation  for the word "Christ" to cut down on the cost of the books and pamphlets. From there, the abbreviation moved into general use in newspapers and other publications, and "Xmas" became an accepted way of printing "Christmas" (along with the abbreviations Xian and Xianity). Even Webster’s dictionary acknowledges that the abbreviation Xmas was in common use by the middle of the sixteenth century.”

No doubt the season of Christmas has been becoming more and more secular and commercialized. However, the word “Xmas” is not a modern invention to try to convert Christmas into a secular day, nor is it a device to promote the commercialism of the holiday season.

The world has no way to kick Christ out of the world since He is the creator. Christ died for His bride and had given up His life for His bride, the church. The only one could make Christ vanish today in the world is His bride, the church. The only one that could devoice Him is his own bride since Christ did not have a (marriage) covenant with the world, even though He came for the world, but with His own church.

As the church shows decline in this part of the world, we try so hard not only to fight back but also try to blame “the world”. However, as the author of the “an unstoppable force” wrote: there is no perfect storm out there could sink the church. I believe it is so true, as long as our Lord in aboard with us.

Wish you all have a Merry Xmas.