Long before the current round of “War on Christmas” dust-ups began a few years ago, many well-meaning Christians bemoaned the fact that Christ was being “taken out of Christmas.” Often they pointed to the use of the shorthand, “Xmas” as a vivid example of the secularization of a very significant day on the Christian calendar. In black and white, the name of Christ was being “crossed out.”
But this is a somewhat modern myth or misconception about Christmas that doesn’t require too much explanation. The word “Xmas” has been around a very long time. And as many Christians throughout the world would have understood, the X is all about Jesus.
From the earliest times of Christianity, the X was used as a symbol of the name of Christ. It originally comes from the spelling of Jesus’ name and honorific title in Greek –the principal original language of the New Testament. The Greek letter Chi (X) stood for Christ in an ancient Greek acrostic that comes down to us in English as IXOYE and meant the first letters of the words, “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior.”
The fact that this word in Greek, “icthyus,” also means “fish” underscored the connection to Jesus who told some of his disciples that he would make them “fishers of men.” As millions of “fishy” bumper stickers prove, the fish remains a highly ubiquitous image of Christianity.
So don’t get “X-cited” when you see Xmas.
