EDITORIAL: The true meaning of Xmas

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/27/the-true-meaning-of-xmas/ ^ | 11/27/09 | The Washington Times

[paltz]

Thanksgiving is over and Black Friday has arrived. With the Christmas season now semiofficially upon us, tradition dictates that consumers flood shopping malls and online marketplaces to buy everything in sight. At the same time, politically motivated busybodies stop at nothing to distract from, deny or delete any references to that Jesus guy who may or may not have inspired the holiday known as Xmas. The "X" stands for we can't remember what.

Every year, chain stores, schools, local town councils, advertisers and others needlessly put themselves in the middle of the Christmas censorship debate in an effort to appease the politically correct grinch.

[doc1019]

I know there are many excuses and rational for using the word XMAS, but it still bothers me. It is Christmas!!! Not Xmas. Just a personal thing.

[tflabo]

The X-mas is very insulting. Similar to sending a birthday card to family or friend with the title ‘Happy Birthday X.’
Keep Christ in Christmas.

[Anti-Utopian]

Eid al-Adha, by the way, for those who don't know, is the Islamic "festival of sacrifice" that concludes the Hajj, which is the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.

The "mas" in "X-mas," by the way, for those who don't know, is the Catholic "Mass." That's the true meaning of "Christmas." How is the Protestant custom of stripping the "Mass" out of a Catholic Mass better than the Atheist tradition of also stripping the cheap plastic idols of white people and animals out?

[HiTech RedNeck]

The X of Xmas began as a reference to the Greek letter Chi which looks like the English X but is pronounced as a rough kh. It is the first letter of the Greek word Christos which means messiah (or as we transliterate it, Christ). The -mas suffix is a term for the serving of communion traditionally done by the church upon the December 25 holiday in remembrance of the birth of Jesus.

So no, Xmas was not coined as a blasphemous term. But few stop to think what it means.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Many evangelical churches do serve communion on Christmas eve.

[Anti-Utopian]

The Mass is the complex of prayers and ceremonies that make up the service of the Eucharist in the Latin rites. The term "Mass" is derived from the Late Latin word missa (dismissal), a word used in the concluding formula of Mass in Latin: "Ite, missa est" ("Go; it is the dismissal").

A Protestant communion, even an Anglican or Lutheran communion, isn't a Catholic Mass by any measure.

[HiTech RedNeck]

It is not intended to be.

[donna]

The "X" in Xmas is from the Greek letter Chi, which is the first letter of Χριστός, Christ in Greek.

[Anti-Utopian]

Therefore, the only people who have a right to be cheesed about Christ-Mass being modified are the Catholics, who had their Mass warped into a Protestant holiday, the European pagans, who had their retarded winter rituals warped into a Catholic holiday, and Jesus Christ, who never initiated any of it and would rather you obey Him instead of fighting over a day he never commanded you to lionize.

[HiTech RedNeck]

You are one of many false dichotomists.

[SamAdams76]

If we can call Christmas X-mas, can we also call Hanukkah X-kah?

[SnakeDoctor]

If the author understood the meaning, he wouldn’t have used the term “Xmas”.

SnakeDoc

[sionnsar]

With the Christmas season now semiofficially upon us

Glad it's only "semi-officially" because for some of us it doesn't arrive* arrive until the evening of December 24th. From this Sunday until then, it's the season of Advent. A penitential season, not party time.

And the 12 Days of Christmas traditionally and historically begin, not end, on Christmas Day.

[SnakeDoctor]

A pseudo-intellectual junk explanation for substituting “X” for “Christ”. Most people who use the term don’t know or care that Christ starts with X in Greek. We speak English here.

SnakeDoc

[SnakeDoctor]

>> the only people who have a right to be cheesed about Christ-Mass being modified are the Catholics

BS.

>> who had their Mass warped into a Protestant holiday

Not sure I’d pull at that thread if I were you. Protestants do not “warp” Christmas.

SnakeDoc

[Peacekeeper357]

I normally would say “Welcome to FR” but in your case let me say “GO BACK TO DU OR WHEREVER YOU CAME FROM.”

[VRWCmember]

In notetaking, a capital X is often used as an abbreviation for Christ. In fact in the Greek acronym ΙΧΦΥΣ, transliterated "Ichthus", and often seen inside the the outline of a fish, the letter Chi (X) stands for Christ. So even when people use the abbreviation X-mas, they still haven't really taken Christ out of Christmas.

[donna]

The first two letters of the word Christ (cristoV, or as it would be written in older manuscripts, CRISTOS) are the Greek letters chi (c or C) and rho (r or R). These letters were used in the early church to create the chi-rho monogram (see Christian Symbols: Christmas Ornaments), a symbol that by the fourth century became part of the official battle standard of the emperor Constantine.

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 C 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.
Source: http://www.cresourcei.org/symbols/xmasorigin.html

[doc1019]

I still prefer Christmas over Xmas. Xmas just seems to belittle the birth of Christ. IMHO