Why do we write Xmas for Christmas? The “X” isn’t an X from the Latin alphabet; it is from the Greek alphabet, and it is “chi”, the first letter of the Greek word Christos, meaning Christ.
I didn’t actually know until I started researching this topic today that some people think Xmas is an attempt to secularize Christmas. They think that using X removes Christ from the word and makes it less religious. They look at X as either crossing out Jesus Christ or as a symbol of an unknown quantity, as it is used in algebra. Such arguments have been around since at least the 1950s and possibly even earlier. That is interesting because it is certainly not the reason why the word Xmas was created and Xmas with an X has been around in English for possibly a thousand years and in Greek for two thousand. X used in algebra was only invented by René Descartes in 1637.
The X in Xmas is the Greek letter chi. It is the first letter of Christ when written in Greek: Χριστός, pronounced as Christos. The X was often written instead of the whole name Christ because it was faster, and people knew what it meant. Before the invention of the printing press, nearly all books were written by hand, and the majority of books were religious texts copied by monks. Writing out the same word again and again could get tedious, and Christ is obviously a very common word when writing religious texts. They used X as an abbreviation for Christ. An early recorded use of this was in the year 1100 AD when it was written in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The author wrote Xp̄es mæsse, which means Christ’s mass. “Xp̄” means Christ, “es” was the old English way of expressing belonging (modern day apostrophe s), and “maesse” is obviously mass. There are numerous instances of X being used as an abbreviation for Christ. This was not just in the word Christmas, but for many usages of Christ. Over the next few hundred years, the abbreviation X stuck and there are many instances of it being used. Christian was written as Xtian, and even the name Christopher was written as Xpofer.
The tradition of using X instead of Christ didn’t start with English. Very early Greek writings use shortened versions of Christ and that continued into Latin. There are a few commonly used abbreviations. Medieval scribes marked sacred names as nomina sacra—standard contractions written with a line over the top (e.g., Xp̄ for Christus). X (chi) is the one we have already talked about. It comes from the beginning of Christ. There was IX (Iota Chi), which comes from the first letters of Jesus Christ (Ἰησοῦς Χριστός). The I was often written in the center of the X to make a symbol that looks like a six pointed star. Then there is XP (chi rho), which is taken from the first two letters of Christ. The first usage of X for Christmas in English uses the Xp form. There are several others as well. They are all abbreviations, but they also served another purpose. They were ways of writing Jesus Christ without it being obvious. In the beginning of the Christian church, Christians were persecuted, and it was often necessary to hide the name of Christ. One example of this is the origin of the Christian fish symbol. It was another way of writing Christ without it being obvious. In Greek, fish is ἸΧΘΥΣ (ichthus). The first letters of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior (Ἰησοῦς Χρῑστός Θεοῦ Υἱός Σωτήρ) spell fish. Drawing the fish was a way of showing other believers one’s faith without giving it away to the Roman forces that were persecuting them.
So, if we used X and other abbreviations for Christ, why has only Xmas remained? The main reason is the invention of the printing press and the increase in publishing in the 15th century. Before the printing press, standardized spellings didn’t really matter. With the invention of the printing press, there was a push to standardize spelling to make it easier to print manuscripts in different places. They couldn’t just use a capital X for the abbreviation for Christ, they would need a special Greek font. That made it more difficult to print and to read, so the majority of the abbreviations were dropped. They kept it for Xmas because the word was long and, over the next few centuries, it was used so often that making it shorter saved space. The introduction of Christmas cards, telegrams, newspapers, and adverts cemented it. Most modern style guides treat say Xmas is informal and that Christmas should be used in formal prose, but it was never a problem because everybody knew what it meant. It is only relatively recently that people appear to have forgotten. So. Merry Xmas. And this is what I learned today.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xmas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christogram
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_controversies
https://www.dictionary.com/articles/xmas-christogram
https://www.crivoice.org/symbols/xmasorigin.html