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Xmas (also X-mas) is a common abbreviation of the word ''
Christmas Christmas is an annual festival commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people around the world. A feast central to the Christian liturgical year ...
''. It is sometimes pronounced , but ''Xmas'', and variants such as ''Xtemass'', originated as handwriting abbreviations for the typical pronunciation . The "X" comes from the
Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
letter '' Chi'', which is the first letter of the Greek word (), which became ''
Christ Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...
'' in English. The suffix ''-mas'' is from the Latin-derived
Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...
word for
Mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different eleme ...
. There is a Common English belief that the word ''Xmas'' stems from a secularizing tendency to de-emphasize the religious tradition from Christmas.


Style guides and etiquette

"Xmas" is deprecated by some modern style guides, including those at the ''
New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'
''The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage''
''
The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...
'', ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'', and the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
.Griffiths, Emma
"Why get cross about Xmas?"
BBC website, December 22, 2004. Retrieved December 28, 2008.
Millicent Fenwick Millicent Vernon Hammond Fenwick (February 25, 1910 – September 16, 1992) was an American fashion editor, politician and diplomat. A four-term Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from New Jersey, she entered politic ...
, in the 1948 ''Vogue's Book of Etiquette'', states that "'Xmas' should never be used" in greeting cards. ''The Cambridge Guide to Australian English Usage'' states that the spelling should be considered informal and restricted to contexts where concision is valued, such as headlines and greeting cards.Peters, Pam
"Xmas" article
''The Cambridge Guide to Australian English Usage'', Cambridge University Press, 2007, , p 872, retrieved via Google Books, December 27, 2008 ''The Christian Writer's Manual of Style'', while acknowledging the ancient and respectful use of "Xmas" in the past, states that the spelling should never be used in
formal writing A literary language is the form (register) of a language used in written literature, which can be either a nonstandard dialect or a standardized variety of the language. Literary language sometimes is noticeably different from the spoken lang ...
.


History


Use in English

Early use of "Xmas" includes Bernard Ward's ''History of St. Edmund's college, Old Hall'' (originally published circa 1755). An earlier version, "X'temmas", dates to 1551. Around 1100 the term was written as in the '' Anglo-Saxon Chronicle''. "Xmas" is found in a letter from George Woodward in 1753.
Lord Byron George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known simply as Lord Byron, was an English romantic poet and peer. He was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, and has been regarded as among the ...
used the term in 1811, as did
Samuel Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake P ...
(1801) and
Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are '' Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequ ...
(1864). In the United States, the fifth American edition of William Perry's ''Royal Standard English Dictionary'', published in Boston in 1800, included in its list of "Explanations of Common Abbreviations, or Contraction of Words" the entry: "Xmas. Christmas."
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (March 8, 1841 – March 6, 1935) was an American jurist and legal scholar who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1902 to 1932.Holmes was Acting Chief Justice of the Un ...
used the term in a letter dated 1923. Since at least the late 19th century, "Xmas" has been in use in various other English-language nations. Quotations with the word can be found in texts first written in Canada, and the word has been used in Australia, and in the Caribbean. ''Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage'' stated that modern use of the term is largely limited to advertisements, headlines and banners, where its conciseness is valued. The association with commerce "has done nothing for its reputation", according to the dictionary. In the United Kingdom, the former
Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britai ...
Bishop of
Blackburn Blackburn () is an industrial town and the administrative centre of the Blackburn with Darwen borough in Lancashire, England. The town is north of the West Pennine Moors on the southern edge of the Ribble Valley, east of Preston and north-n ...
, Alan Chesters, recommended to his clergy that they avoid the spelling. In the United States, in 1977
New Hampshire New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the nor ...
Governor
Meldrim Thomson Meldrim Thomson Jr. (March 8, 1912 – April 19, 2001) was an American politician who served three terms as the 73rd governor of New Hampshire from 1973 to 1979. A Republican, he was known as a strong supporter of conservative political values. E ...
sent out a press release saying that he wanted journalists to keep the "Christ" in Christmas, and not call it Xmas—which he called a " pagan" spelling of 'Christmas'.


Use of "X" for "Christ"

The abbreviation of Christmas as "Xmas" is a source of disagreement among Christians who observe the holiday. The December 1957 ''News and Views'' published by the Church League of America, a conservative organization co-founded in 1937 by George Washington Robnett, attacked the use of Xmas in an article titled "X=The Unknown Quantity". The claims were picked up later by
Gerald L. K. Smith Gerald Lyman Kenneth Smith (February 27, 1898 – April 15, 1976) was an American clergyman, politician and organizer known for his populist and far-right demagoguery. A leader of the populist Share Our Wealth movement during the Great Depressio ...
, who in December 1966 claimed that Xmas was a "blasphemous omission of the name of Christ" and that "'X' is referred to as being symbolical of the unknown quantity". Smith further argued that the Jewish people had introduced Santa Claus to suppress New Testament accounts of Jesus, and that the United Nations, at the behest of "world Jewry", had "outlawed the name of Christ". There is, however, a well documented history of use of ''Χ'' (actually the
Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
letter ' chi') as an abbreviation for "Christ" and possibly also a symbol of the cross. The abbreviation appears on many Orthodox Christian religious icons. Dennis Bratcher, writing for Christian website ''The Voice'', states "there are always those who loudly decry the use of the abbreviation 'Xmas' as some kind of blasphemy against Christ and Christianity". Among them are evangelist
Franklin Graham William Franklin Graham III (born July 14, 1952) is an American evangelist and missionary. He frequently engages in Christian revival tours and political commentary. He is president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) and ...
and former
CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...
contributor
Roland S. Martin Roland Sebastian Martin (born November 14, 1968) is an American journalist. He was a commentator for TV One, the host of ''News One Now'', and ''Washington on Watch With Roland S. Martin''. He was also a CNN contributor, appearing on a variety ...
. Graham stated in an interview:
"for us as Christians, this is one of the most holy of the holidays, the birth of our savior Jesus Christ. And for people to take Christ out of Christmas. They're happy to say merry Xmas. Let's just take Jesus out. And really, I think, a war against the name of Jesus Christ."
Roland Martin likewise relates the use of "Xmas" to his growing concerns of increasing commercialization and secularization of one of Christianity's highest holy days. Bratcher posits that those who dislike abbreviating the word are unfamiliar with a long history of Christians using X in place of "Christ" for various purposes. The word "
Christ Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...
" and its compounds, including "Christmas", have been abbreviated in English for at least the past 1,000 years, long before the modern "Xmas" was commonly used. "Christ" was often written as "Xρ" or "Xt"; there are references in the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' as far back as 1021. This 'X' and 'P' arose as the
uppercase Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...
forms of the
Greek letters The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as we ...
(Ch) and (R) used in ancient abbreviations for (Greek for "Christ"). The
Chi-Rho The Chi Rho (☧, English pronunciation ; also known as ''chrismon'') is one of the earliest forms of Christogram, formed by superimposing the first two (capital) letters— chi and rho (ΧΡ)—of the Greek word ( Christos) in such a way tha ...
, an amalgamation of the two Greek letters rendered as '☧' (
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...
character ) is a symbol often used to represent Christ in
Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
,
Protestant Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...
, and
Orthodox Orthodox, Orthodoxy, or Orthodoxism may refer to: Religion * Orthodoxy, adherence to accepted norms, more specifically adherence to creeds, especially within Christianity and Judaism, but also less commonly in non-Abrahamic religions like Neo-pa ...
Christian Churches. The ''
Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a co ...
'' (''OED'') and the ''OED Supplement'' have cited usages of "X-" or "Xp-" for "Christ-" as early as 1485. The terms "Xtian" and less commonly "Xpian" have also been used for "Christian". The ''OED'' further cites usage of "Xtianity" for "Christianity" from 1634. According to ''Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage'', most of the evidence for these words comes from "educated Englishmen who knew their Greek"."Xmas" article
''Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage'', Merriam-Webster, 1994, p 968, , retrieved via Google Books, December 27, 2008 In ancient Christian art, and are abbreviations for Christ's name. In many manuscripts of the ''
New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Chri ...
'' and
icon An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Catholic churches. They are not simply artworks; "an icon is a sacred image used in religious devotion". The most ...
s, 'Χ' is an abbreviation for , as is XC (the first and last letters in Greek, using the lunate sigma); compare IC for
Jesus Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label= Hebrew/ Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religiou ...
in Greek.


Other uses of "X(t)" for "Chris(t)-"

Other proper names containing the name "Christ" besides those mentioned above are sometimes abbreviated similarly, either as "X" or "Xt", both of which have been used historically, e.g., "Xtopher" or "Xopher" for "Christopher", or "Xtina" or "Xina" for the name "Christina". In the 17th and 18th centuries, "Xene" and "Exene" were common spellings for the given name Christine. The American singer
Christina Aguilera Christina María Aguilera (; ; born December 18, 1980) is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and television personality. Known for her four-octave vocal range and ability to sustain high notes, she has been referred to as the " Voice of ...
has sometimes gone by the name "Xtina". Similarly,
Exene Cervenka Exene Cervenka (born Christene Lee Cervenka; February 1, 1956) is an American singer, artist, and poet. She is best known for her work as a singer in the California punk rock band X. Music career The 21-year-old Cervenka met 23-year-old ...
has been a noted American singer-songwriter since 1977. This usage of "X" to spell the syllable "kris" (rather than the sounds "ks") has extended to "xtal" for "
crystal A crystal or crystalline solid is a solid material whose constituents (such as atoms, molecules, or ions) are arranged in a highly ordered microscopic structure, forming a crystal lattice that extends in all directions. In addition, macro ...
", and on
florist Floristry is the production, commerce, and trade in flowers. It encompasses flower care and handling, floral design and arrangement, merchandising, production, display and flower delivery. Wholesale florists sell bulk flowers and related sup ...
s' signs to "xant" for " chrysanthemum", even though these words are not etymologically related to "Christ": "crystal" comes from a Greek word meaning "ice" (and not even using the letter ), and "chrysanthemum" comes from Greek words meaning "golden flower", while "Christ" comes from a Greek word meaning "anointed".


Popular culture

* In the animated TV series Futurama, Christmas is referred to just as "Xmas", in speech and writing.


See also

* Christogram *
Christmas controversies Christmas is the Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, which, in Western Christian Churches, is held annually on 25 December. For centuries, it has been the subject of several reformations, both religious and secular. In the 17t ...
* Labarum * Names and titles of Jesus


References


External links


An icon of Christ featuring the abbreviations IC and XC in the upper corners

"Why get cross about Xmas?"
(BBC, December 22, 2004) {{Christmas 16th-century neologisms Abbreviations Linguistic controversies