Why is it xmas anyway?

Ponderings - 2 Comments » - Posted on December, 21, 2006 at 9:51 pm

As a side not in an email to a group of friends I asked “Why do we call it xmas? It’s not crossmass, it’s christmass. What accent spawned the abbreivation xmas?” and I get a reply from the honorable Johnny G:

I believe the x comes from the greek ‘chi’ originally, which was used as an abbreviation for christ. More recently it is used by people such as myself to take out the ‘christ’ from christmas and reflect the fact that it’s more of a secular orgy of consumerism than a solemn observation of some dead guy’s birthday… sometimes you also see people write about ‘xians’ or ‘xtians’, which riles up religious folk somewhat… (you asked!)

Verified by the blogging Reverend Collins. Stick to the top paragraph. If you read too much, you’ll turn into a xtian.