December 2009

I noticed an online acquaintance the other day becoming extremely agitated that someone had referred to Christmas using the colloquialism Xmas. She felt that this was insulting, and offensive in the extreme. What she didn't realize was that Xmas as a shortened form for Christmas has a venerable, and solidly Christian, history.

The word Christmas is a compound of Christ + mass; we see it first in Old English in the form Cristes mæsse in 1038, according to the OED. The Old English form eventually evolved to the Middle English Christemasse. The word Christ is derived from the Greek word Christos, meaning "anointed," a literal translation of the Hebrew cognate of messiah.

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