Don't Take the X Out of Xmas

A lot of people throw out the phrase, "Put Christ back in Christmas" in response to the term, "Xmas," which has become a cultural substitute for Christmas. But most people use that phrase ignorantly. Xmas was not coined to take Christ out of Christmas; in fact, what we see as an X in our English language is not even one! It's a Greek chi.

R.C. Sproul explains:

First of all, you have to understand that it is not the letter X that is put into Christmas. We see the English letter X there, but actually what it involves is the first letter of the Greek name for Christ. Christos is the New Testament Greek for Christ. The first letter of the Greek word Christos is transliterated into our alphabet as an X. That X has come through church history to be a shorthand symbol for the name of Christ. 

 

We don’t see people protesting the use of the Greek letter theta, which is an O with a line across the middle. We use that as a shorthand abbreviation for God because it is the first letter of the word Theos, the Greek word for God. 

 

The idea of X as an abbreviation for the name of Christ came into use in our culture with no intent to show any disrespect for Jesus.

Read the rest here.

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