The Origins of Xmas
I was speaking to someone this week who said something I hadn't heard before - Xmas had no religious connotations. X being the mathematical symbol for an unknown, anything, anyone. Xmas can be anybodies holiday. Ye wha?
Personally I don't buy into this theory but it got me thinking about why we put a seemingly random X in place of Christ. That idea though seems to embody the fears of many Christians - the common usage of Xmas is removing Christ from Xmas!!! I'm not trying to remove Christ....I'm just too lazy to write it all out!
Ironically, using Xmas to stay within the 160 character limit phone companies insist on forcing upon us is remarkably close to why Xmas probably came about in the first place. X is the Greek letter Chi, which is the first letter of the Greek word Christos - you get the idea. I read that Inge Milfull at the Oxford English Dictionaries has found references to XPmas in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle dated 1021. P, I presume, is the Greek letter Ro - the second letter of Christos?
Xmas probably came into common usage for the very same reasons we use it now, not to save space in text messages or shop signs, but to save parchment. If X was used a symbol for Christ you could save quite a bit of room on quite expensive parchment when you were writing your biblical papers etc. where you'd have written Christ quite often.
Well there you go, a very brief, very disjointed (and probably wrong) introduction to the origins of Xmas.
For some reason my proposal of calling it Giftmas didn't go down too well.
Personally I don't buy into this theory but it got me thinking about why we put a seemingly random X in place of Christ. That idea though seems to embody the fears of many Christians - the common usage of Xmas is removing Christ from Xmas!!! I'm not trying to remove Christ....I'm just too lazy to write it all out!
Ironically, using Xmas to stay within the 160 character limit phone companies insist on forcing upon us is remarkably close to why Xmas probably came about in the first place. X is the Greek letter Chi, which is the first letter of the Greek word Christos - you get the idea. I read that Inge Milfull at the Oxford English Dictionaries has found references to XPmas in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle dated 1021. P, I presume, is the Greek letter Ro - the second letter of Christos?
Xmas probably came into common usage for the very same reasons we use it now, not to save space in text messages or shop signs, but to save parchment. If X was used a symbol for Christ you could save quite a bit of room on quite expensive parchment when you were writing your biblical papers etc. where you'd have written Christ quite often.
Well there you go, a very brief, very disjointed (and probably wrong) introduction to the origins of Xmas.
For some reason my proposal of calling it Giftmas didn't go down too well.
posted by Quack at
3:51 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home