What is the 'X' in 'Xmas'?

-


Words change over time—their meaning, their usage, and even their spelling. Take Christmas and its shortened version, Xmas, for example.

We see Xmas written nearly everywhere, from holiday advertisements to Christmas cards. The word Christmas comes from the combination of the words ‘Christ’ and ‘mass.’ But where did the X in Xmas come from, and what does it mean?
In the Greek alphabet, X is the symbol for the letter ‘chi.’ Chi (or X) is the first letter in theirGreek word for Christ. In the early days of the Christian church, Christians used the letter X as a secret symbol to indicate their membership in the church to others.

If you know the Greek meaning of X, Xmas and Christmas essentially mean the same thing: Christ + mas = Christmas.

-Ann Edwards

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ICYMI: 10 Things that Happened in Rivers State over the Weekend and in the Past Week

-
Image
10 Things that Happened over the Weekend and in the Past Week in Rivers State: 1. Protest, as body of missing young woman is found in well in Rumuosi Community                             Lifeless body of young woman after it was brought out of the well                                           Compound well in Rumuosi where body was found                 2. Police in Rivers State arrest four people for allegedly stealing one-month-old baby 3. Police in Rivers State rearrest owner of real estate company, The Villa 4. Rivers State to start operating Treasury Single Account 5. Rivers State Road Maintenance Agency say rain is the major challenge affecting its operations 6. Alleged Port Harcourt serial killer, Gracious David-West, changes...
Read more

The Beauty of Southern Kaduna

-
Image
I love travelling. I didn’t realise this until my national youth service in 2010. Of course, I had travelled even beyond the shores of Nigeria before that year, but there were things I experienced in 2010 that made me discover this part of myself. Truly, life is a journey, and if you’re deliberate and taking note of certain things about life, you’ll find out that life can be a journey of self-realization. Let’s get back to my love for travelling. When I and a childhood cum close friend, Boma, had heard that the NYSC posting list was out, we were apprehensive or somewhat anxious about the list. We needed to see where we had been posted to, majorly because we didn’t want to be posted to any ‘dreaded’ place. We didn’t ‘work’ our posting, so it was expected. Come to think of it now, I wish knew some things then, that I know now, like the fact that THE EARTH IS THE LORD’S. Maybe I wouldn’t have been worried. And to think of how things panned out, there was no need to worry about where I w...
Read more

Are Journalists Getting Soft?

-
Image
I had a conversation with a senior colleague bothering on journalism and trauma.  He asked one striking question: "Are journalists getting soft?" In the course of our conversation, he talked about how this era or generation of journalists enjoy certain privileges that older journalists didn't enjoy and how things are more or less served on a platter of gold in terms of working conditions for younger ones. He also said journalism is a profession we signed up for and have to face the realities that come with the job. Just like the military and police personnel, there are hazards of the job journalists must face, he insinuated. Then I reminded him that these guys experience PTSD. Journalists consume a lot of traumatic content. 'Regular' citizens consume as well, and it's not good for anyone at all.  Journalists have to probe further and sometimes consume a particular traumatic content over and over again to find answers and clues. Now, the past week was p...
Read more