Xmas (pronounced kris-muhs (u) or eks-muhs (non-U))
An abbreviation
for Christmas which, despite a long history of uncontroversial use, is increasingly
labelled offensive by fundamentalist Christians.
1755: The
construct was X- (the Greek letter χι (chi))
+ Christ (our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ) + mas (Eucharistic service) from the Middle English messe & masse, from the Old English mæsse
(the mass, church festival), from the Vulgar Latin messa (Eucharistic service (literally "dismissal”)), from the Late
Latin missa (dismissal), the feminine
past participle of mittere (to let
go, send). The connection is X being the
initial letter in the Ancient Greek word Χριστός
(Chrīstos) (Christ)
although it’s speculated the physical resemblance between X and the cross on
which Christ was crucified may at least have strengthened the association. It sometimes appears as X-mas but Xtmas is
long archaic; the plural is Xmases and there’s also the occasional appearance Xmassy
(ie an (X- +) abbreviation of the adjective Christmassy) but it’s
non-standard. As a point of usage, Xmas
should be pronounced kris-muhs, eks-muhs both non-U and a misplaced
spoken tribute to the written although, it’s permissible if being used in the
context of complaining about the use of the spelling Xmas.
The
seemingly strange connection of the element –mas between a ritual of churches and the Latin root meaning
“dismissal” is thought to lie in the concluding words of the service: Ite, missa est (“Go, (the prayer) has
been sent" or "Go, it is the dismissal”)). In Old English use, the Latin was sometimes
glossed sendnes (send-ness) and the
meaning "musical setting of certain parts of the Roman Catholic and Anglican
liturgies” emerged in the 1590s.
Variations of mass are common in European languages including the Dutch mis, German Messe, Danish messe,
Swedish mässa & Icelandic messa.
Xmas
was apparently first used in 1755 as a modification of the earlier abbreviation
X'temmas, attested from 1551 where X was
for Christ, the English letter X being identical in form (but not sound
signification) to Greek χι (chi), the
first letter of Ancient Greek Χριστός (Chrīstos) (Christ). Earlier, the convention in English when abbreviating
Christmas was to use Xp- or Xr- (corresponding to the
"Chr-" in the Greek Χριστος), the spelling Χp̃es mæssa (Christmas) is in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (a circa 1100 compilation of documents chronicling
the history of the Anglo-Saxons, the original text dating from late in the
reign of Alfred the Great (circa-899, king of the West Saxons from 871-circa
886 of the Anglo-Saxons circa 886-899)) and that was from Cristes mæsse, again with the abbreviation of Cristes provided by the symbol X, an orthographic borrowing from
Ancient Greek χι (chi). Scholars seem generally to agree the first
known proto-Xmas appeared in 1021 when an Anglo-Saxon scribe saved some space with
the multiple repetitions of Xpmas in
a document; parchment was then expensive as the letters on telegrams would a
millennium-odd later be. Just to save
space then, the same imperative that would later result in the anti-climatic
Y2K bug, computer memory address space briefly the scarce parchment of its
time.
Xmas was for centuries an accepted and uncontroversial abbreviation for Christmas, one found in the archives of both the Vatican and Lambeth Palace, for years used especially with technologies like telegrams and telexes which sometimes charged the sender by the letter and the thousand-odd year history of X as a substitute for “Christ” includes the words of men of letters Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), Lord Byron (1788-1824), Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), TS Eliot (1888–1965) and the theologians amateur & professional, CS Lewis (1898–1963) & Karl Barth (1886–1968). In the twentieth century however, the attitudes of fundamental Christians hardened as the new spirit of intolerance washed around the planet, the trend intensified in recent years by technologies which both amplified extreme views and gave them an unprecedented opportunity of dissemination. At its core was a concern nominally or established Christian nations were having imposed on them the double threat of chauvinistic multiculturalism and creeping secularization with Xmas (“taking Christ out of Christmas”) a blatant insult to the faithful. Even before social media however, there had been objections; as early as the 1940s, books of etiquette and style guides from the usual subjects suggested Xmas should be avoided in formal writing and banned absolutely from appearing on Christmas cards. Telegrams still being a thing, it was acknowledged there was a place for Xmas but that place was mostly in the squalid business of commerce, advertising the place it belonged; elsewhere it was inelegant though hardly an attack on Christendom. Even those such as Robert Hudson (b 1938) who in Christian Writer's Manual of Style (2004) documented the etymology and acknowledged the ancient history of respectful use, said it should be avoided if possible and never appear in formal writing. It’s now common for certain factions of Christianity to label the use of Xmas a blasphemy. Fox News definitely avoid it.
The linguistic link between “X” and “Christ” was unrelated to it being the
choice of family name by African-American civil rights activist Malcolm X. Malcolm X was politically the most interesting
activist of the era and renounced the family name of his birth because he
thought it a legacy of something imposed on his forebears by a slave-owner, “X”
used in the sense it’s applied in mathematics to represent an unknown variable,
his true family name from Africa which could never be known. The abandonment of family names was the
practice of the Nation of Islam
(founded 1930), theologically a distinct branch of the faith with a particular emphasis
on an overtly political ideology.
Malcolm X joined the Nation of
Islam around 1949 and the teaching of its then leader, Elijah Muhammad
(1897–1975), was that their “true names would in future be revealed” although he
made more than one explanation of the circumstances in which this would happen.
