Don’t ‘Xmas’ me. Either take the trouble to type Christmas or don’t bother
You learn something every day.....
The word "
Christ" and its compounds, including "Christmas", have been abbreviated in English for at least the past 1,000 years, long before the modern "Xmas" was commonly used. "Christ" was often written as "Xρ" or "Xt"; there are references in the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as far back as 1021. This X and P arose as the
uppercase forms of the
Greek letters χ (Ch) and
ρ (R) used in ancient abbreviations for Χριστος (Greek for "Christ").
[1] The
Chi-Rho, an amalgamation of the two Greek letters rendered as ☧,
[note 1] is a symbol often used to represent Christ in
Catholic,
Protestant, and
Orthodox Christian Churches.
[23]
The
Oxford English Dictionary (
OED) and the
OED Supplement have cited usages of "X-" or "Xp-" for "Christ-" as early as 1485. The terms "Xtian" and less commonly "Xpian" have also been used for "Christian". The
OED further cites usage of "Xtianity" for "Christianity" from 1634.
[1] According to
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, most of the evidence for these words comes from "educated Englishmen who knew their Greek".
[11]
In ancient Christian art, χ and χρ are abbreviations for Christ's name.
[24] In many manuscripts of the
New Testament and
icons, Χ is an abbreviation for Χριστος,
[25] as is XC (the first and last letters in Greek, using the lunate
sigma);
[26] compare IC for
Jesus in Greek.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xmas
Non controversial greetings of the season.