Review......Christmas or Xmas ?????

Chi-Rho

I'm a Facebook junkie, and there were a lot of posts about keeping the "Christ" in Christmas.....

"Xmas" is considered by some to be the ultimate sign of  "X - ing" out Christ.....
an abbreviated version of Christmas, not only ridding the season of religious significance, but emphasizing the commercial aspects.

So today, I was surprised to see a "dictionary.com blog" post on FB about  "Xmas".

Surprisingly enough, it may be more respectful than I could have possibly imagined.


 "X" is a Greek letter for "chi", and my first thoughts were the Chinese "life-force" correlation, but  the blog goes on to say that it is the "initial letter in the word Χριστός'  which means “Christ". 
 " X"  has been an acceptable representation of the word “Christ” for hundreds of years....and the "mas" in Xmas is the Old English word for “mass". 
In the same vein, the dignified terms Xpian and Xtian have been used in place of the word “Christian". (http://blog.dictionary.com/xmas-christogram/)

This  "Xmas" is considered yet another "Christogram".

Wikipedia's information on Christograms is that it is a monogram or combination of letters that forms an abbreviation for the name of Jesus Christ; and can also be used as a religious symbol.
One of the oldest Christograms is the Chi-Rho. It consists of the superimposed Greek letters chi (Χ) and rho (Ρ), which are the first two letters of Christ in Greek.

So,  it looks like no one ever took  "Christ" out of Christmas.....he was there all along......
Hmmmmmm.............knowledge is power.

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