I know it’s early for this, however, I was wondering about the use of Xmas as an alternative spelling for Christmas. Is this okay? Just curious. It’s never been a practice of mine to use it.
The X in Xmas is shorthand for Christ because the X recalls the Greek letter chi, the first Greek letter in the word Christos or “Christ.” Chi is the “X” in the chi-rho symbol for Christ, the “P” representing the Greek letter rho that is the second Greek letter in Christ’s name. Understood in this way, there is nothing wrong with abbreviating the word Christmas to Xmas.
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