Christmas shortened to XmasSubmit YOUR questions, through our easy to use form,
to our team of mature Christians known as the Email Evangelists! Question: Why is Christmas abbreviated to Xmas? Is it done to disrespect Jesus? Answer: Changing Christmas to Xmas does not cut Jesus short. I'll explain in a moment. Before I do, however, let's find out where the X in the word came from and then we'll go back fifty years or so when the idea to shorten Christmas seems to have first caught on. The Greek word for Christ is Christos (Strong's Exhaustive Concordance #5547) pronounced khris-tos. In Greek, the twenty-second letter of their alphabet is written as "X" and is pronounced CHI. It is the first Greek letter in the word for Christ and is a distinct part of his name. Many years ago merchants realized they could save space and shave their advertising costs by shortening the word Christmas to Xmas using the letter X to replace the letters "Christ." After a few years of this practice, however, the religious community countered with the slogan, "Let's put CHRIST back into Xmas." Generally they succeeded, especially since modern advertising layouts don't depend on the number of letters in a word. Changing and shortening the spelling of Christmas does not somehow "cut Jesus short" nor does it disrespect him. This is primary due to the fact that most people (whether they go to church or not) realize Christ never really was in Christmas in the first place. Most know that the origin of the holiday is based on pagan, not Christian, beliefs and practices. For example, the celebration of the holiday uses pagan sex symbols to commemorate the birth of Jesus. These facts about Christmas should be no surprise to most people, since every year we're reminded by the media and even ministers / pastors that Jesus was not born anywhere near December 25th. In fact, a good argument can be made that Jesus was born in the FALL of the year, around our September - October period, in 5 B.C. The date of the 25th of December was picked by the Catholic Church many years ago because it was the date when the pagans had an important festival. The thinking was that if the church adopted some pagan holidays, then stripped off some of the more blantant non-Christian activities ("Christianizing" the holiday), then the church was in a better position to attract the pagans and have them convert. Think of it as a membership building program - where the goal is attract more regular members (which means more money and power for the church). One non-Christian holiday that was used to worship the Sun was adopted, changed, and had its focus changed from worshipping the Sun to worshipping the Son (Jesus). Its celebration was eventually called the mass of Christ or CHRISTMAS. |