haha What does the X in Xmas Mean? For all people who use it wrong!

[marieelissa]

The greek letter 'x' is the first letter for the greek word for Christ, Xristos.
Xmas therefore means "Christ's Mass" The "X" in "Xmas" represents the Greek letter chi, which is the initial letter of Christos - the Greek for Christ.
Christians came to use X as a symbol, and it crept into the English language as a shorthand. From there it became more generally used.

Xian for Christian and Xmas for Christmas are customary shorthand when religious writers are writing articles and books, and it gets "corrected" by the typesetters.
Xmas, or in some cases X-mas, is an easier way to write Christmas. So in many ways, the X in Xmas stands for Christ.
Christmas is sometimes called xmas because Χ, or Chi, is the first letter of the Greek spelling of Christ: Χριστός


The Greek word for Christ begins with the letter Chi, which is written identical to the roman letter X. So, as a form of shorthand, some people replace "Christ" with the first letter of his Greek name, X. Note that this abbrevation for Christmas came about long before cell-phone text messaging, though the latter has greatly increased the usage of the former.
christ



Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_the_X_mean_in_'Xmas'#ixzz17jiFT7ii

[jski107]

Exactly the x represents Christ but instead of saying the lords name they call it xmas.

[SCarter984]

  I had a teacher once tell me that it was only written like that by those too lazy to write out the whole word but I was told to always spell it as Christmas because "it looked better" and believe it or not that was told to me by my 3rd grade teacher in a public school. 

I was told the same thin..."that's the lazy way to write it", and I grew up believing it.  I never used it because I didn't want to be seen as disrespecting Christ, as well as not being viewed as "lazy".  Isn't it amazing the things we are taught to believe?  I have been on a quest to understand a lot of the things I was taught by family, the clergy, the schools.  In my older age, I have begun questioning everything.  Thanks for this information.

[jkhanson]

Thank you for the information about the X in Xmas.  I had no idea it actually stands for Christ. 
I had always thought it was disrepectful to write it that way.