
that Xmas is not a modern day attempt to take the 'Christ' out of Christmas?
It's a very old form of the word, coming from the Greek (I think) as their word for Christ begins with an X.
Whatever mistaken reason people use it for now, it was not originally designed as a word for a secular Christmas.
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Tue 12 Dec 2006, 18:30,
archived)
It's a very old form of the word, coming from the Greek (I think) as their word for Christ begins with an X.
Whatever mistaken reason people use it for now, it was not originally designed as a word for a secular Christmas.

The word "Christ" and its compounds, including "Christmas", have been abbreviated for at least the past 1,000 years, long before the modern "Xmas" was commonly used. "Christ" was often written as "XP" or "Xt"; there are references in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as far back as 1021 AD.
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Tue 12 Dec 2006, 18:31,
archived)

I thought it was an American bastardisation.
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Tue 12 Dec 2006, 18:40,
archived)

Some people believe that the term is part of an effort to "take Christ out of Christmas" or to literally "cross out Christ"; it is also seen as evidence of the secularization of Christmas or a vehicle for pushing political correctness, or as a symptom of the commercialization of the holiday (as the abbreviation has long been used by retailers).
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Tue 12 Dec 2006, 18:41,
archived)