And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”

Luke 2:10-12

There are lots of ways that Christmas can be made into a non-Christian celebration: commercialization, secular-cultural adoption, the Santa Claus effect. Calling it Xmas is not one of them. First appearing in its earliest form around 1100 and then in the form of X’temmas in 1551, the X is not an erasure of Christ but a simple abbreviation. The original, biblical Greek word is Χριστος, with the x-shaped Χ (xi) being swapped with the Latin letter x to abbreviate the title of Christ in the name of the celebration.

Please keep this in mind as you speak with your secular friends and family. There are lots of ways to resist the belittling or erasing of the name of Jesus. Fighting against this historical and meaningful abbreviation is not one of them. It is not “x’ing out” Jesus, just calling to mind the old Greek spelling of his sacred title: Χριστος, the Christ, the Messiah, God’s anointed.

Ethan Kirl

This article references the Online Etymological Dictionary.