This 1922 Ladies' Home Journal advertisement uses "Xmas".

This abbreviation is widely used but not universally accepted. Many do not know about its antiquity and believe it to be of commercial origin and thus demeaning to Christ, whilst others find it a helpful abbreviation.

Usage of X for Christ

The word "Christ" and its compounds, including "Christmas", have been abbreviated for at least the past 1,000 years, long before the modern "Xmas" was commonly used. "Christ" was often written as "XP" or "Xt"; there are references in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as far back as 1021 AD. This X and P arose as the uppercase forms of the Greek letters ? and ?), used in ancient abbreviations for ??????? (Greek for "Christ"), and are still widely seen in many Eastern Orthodox icons depicting Jesus Christ. The labarum, an amalgamation of the two Greek letters rendered as ?, is a symbol often used to represent Christ in Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christian Churches.^[2]

Nevertheless, some believe that the term is part of an effort to "take Christ out of Christmas" or to literally "cross out Christ";^[3] it is seen as evidence of the secularization of Christmas, as a symptom of the commercialization of the holiday (as the abbreviation has long been used by retailers). It may also be seen as a vehicle to be more inclusive. (See political correctness.)

The labarum, often called the Chi-Rho, is a Christian symbol representing Christ.

In ancient Christian art, ? and ?? are abbreviations for Christ's name.^[4] In many manuscripts of the New Testament and icons, X is an abbreviation for Christos, as is XC (the first and last letters in Greek, using the lunate sigma); compare IC for Jesus in Greek. The Oxford English Dictionary documents the use of this abbreviation back to 1551, 50 years before the first English colonists arrived in North America and 60 years before the King James Version of the Bible was completed. At the same time, Xian and Xianity were in frequent use as abbreviations of "Christian" and "Christianity"; and nowadays still are sometimes so used, but much less than "Xmas". The proper names containing the name "Christ" other than aforementioned are rarely abbreviated in this way (e.g. Hayden Xensen for the actor name "Hayden Christensen"). This apparent usage of "X" to spell the syllable "kris" (rather than the sounds "ks") has extended to "xtal" for "crystal", and on florists' signs "xant" for "chrysanthemum"^[5] (though these words are not etymologically related to "Christ"; "crystal" comes from a Greek word meaning "ice"; "chrysanthemum" comes from Greek words meaning "golden flower"; "Christ" comes from a Greek word meaning "anointed").

In the 17th and 18th Centuries, "Xene" and "Exene" were common spellings of the given name Christene.

In popular culture

• In the animated television show Futurama, which is set in the 31st century, Xmas, pronounced "eks-mas", is the official name for the day formerly known as Christmas (which has become an "archaic pronunciation").
• In Japanese media and goods, Xmas/X-mas is commonly misspelled as "X'mas" in what amounts to an instance of wasei-eigo, or English made in Japan.
• Popular Japanese rock band, L'Arc~en~Ciel has a song titled "Hurry Xmas", however it is pronounced .

See also

• Christogram
• Names and titles of Jesus
• Christmas controversy
• Robert Christgau, Christo, and Christina Aguilera for other uses of an X prefix abbreviation.

References

External links

• Meaning of X-mas - Shorthand for "Christ"
• 
• "Why get cross about Xmas?" (BBC, December 22, 2004)
• Xmas and Christmas: A Lost Chapter from Herodotus (C.S. Lewis satire, which uses "Exmas" as a name for non-religious aspects of Christmas observance).
• Symbols of Christmas

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