Christmas or XMas?

There's a movement going around in fundamentalist Christianity.  It's the "Put the Christ back in Christmas" movement.   In this movement, people argue that the term, "Xmas" is "paganizing" (is that a word?) the idea that Christmas is about Santa Claus and toys instead of the birth of Jesus.

A former professor of mine, and pastor of Discovery Church in Gahanna, Ohio, explained to me how the Xmas vs. Christmas debate was a waste of time.  This blog will be used to somehow debunk the thought that Xmas is taking Jesus out of Christmas.

The letter X, or the Greek letter, Chi, is they first letter in the word Χριστός, or Khristós.  You can see the X in the familiar Christian symbol to your left. ☧ (This symbol is called the Labarum, after the first two Greek letters in Christ).


Xmas is a short form of CHmas, which, in itself, is a short form of Christmas.  The term is seen as far back as the 1920s in an ad in Ladies Home Journal, (see Wikipedia entry).


The term Xan means Christian.  The term xtal means crystal.  As I mentioned before, scholars, a lot of the time, use X in place of Christ in an institutional setting to save time.  It takes ten strokes on the keyboard to type the word Christian, (shift included).  It takes four strokes on the keyboard to type the word Xan.  


In conclusion, the use of the term Xmas is just for those in a hurry, (or lazy).  There are much more important things to worry about. Stop bashing and damning those who use Xmas. Instead teach them the story and love of Jesus Christ, and how he died for everyone's sins.