What does the X in Xmas mean?

Christmas is also called Xmas sometimes. Some people don’t think it’s correct to call Christmas ‘Xmas’ as that takes out the religious ties away from this holiday. Some also believe that saying ‘happy holidays’ rubs out the season’s religious roots.

But this argument is not quite right as the X in “Xmas” literally means Jesus and here is the explanation.

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In the Greek language, the word Christ begins with the letter X or Chi. The letter X is the Greek letter chi (pronounced ‘kye’ – it rhymes with ‘eye’).

Earlier, the church used the first two letters of Christ in the Greek alphabet ‘chi’ and ‘rho’ to create a monogram (symbol) that represents the name of Jesus. This looks like an X with a small p on the top – ☧.

In the early fourth century, Roman Emperor, Constantine the Great (306-337), popularly used this shorthand for Christ.

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According to ‘First Things’, most scholars believe that this abbreviation for Christmas was first used in 1021 when an Anglo-Saxon scribe saved himself space by writing XPmas. Parchment paper was very expensive so they used various techniques to save space. This abbreviation was eventually shortened to Xmas.

There is another acronym for Christian that many of are not familiar with “ΙΧΘΥΣ”.

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You might have seen a fish sticker called “Jesus fish” on a car, a cap, or someone wearing a badge. Jesus wanted to make his followers ‘Fishers of Men’, so many people started using this symbol. During the times when Romans wanted to kill Christians (before Emperor Constantine became a Christian), they had to meet in secret and they started using this symbol.

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ΙΧΘΥΣ is pronounced as Ich-thus, the Greek word for fish. Earlier, Christians used it as an abbreviated form of ‘Ie-sous Christos Theou Huios So-te-r’ which in English means “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour”. The second letter of this word is X or Christos.

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So, Xmas also means Christmas but it should be pronounced as Christmas than ‘ex-mas’. Christmas is itself a short term for Christ’s mass.