Every December, right on schedule, someone announces with great confidence that writing “Xmas” is a sinister attempt to erase Christ. Cue the outrage, the memes, and the self-appointed guardians of seasonal orthodoxy. And every year, history calmly clears its throat, raises one eyebrow, and says: “Actually… no.”
Because here’s the awkward little truth that refuses to stay buried under modern outrage—the “X” in Xmas literally means Christ. Not figuratively. Not symbolically in some loose, poetic way. Literally. Linguistically. Historically. Gotcha.
Let’s rewind a few thousand years, back to a time before Twitter theologians and Facebook historians. The New Testament wasn’t written in English. Shocking, I know. It was written in Greek, where Christ is Χριστός (Christos). That very first letter? Chi. Looks exactly like an English X. Early Christians—actual Christians, the persecuted, fed-to-lions, carved-fish-in-the-dirt kind—used X as shorthand for Christ all the time. Not to hide Him. To honor Him.
They even doubled down with the Chi-Rho (☧)—the X and P from Christos—a symbol plastered on shields, banners, manuscripts, and churches long before anyone thought Starbucks was part of a pagan conspiracy. This wasn’t secular minimalism. This was sacred shorthand.
So when you write Xmas, you’re not crossing Christ out. You’re writing His name the way the early Church did. The irony is delicious. The very people shouting “Don’t take Christ out of Christmas!” are often attacking a symbol Christians invented to put Him front and center.
This is where it gets fun. The modern attempt to be clever—“Aha! You removed Christ!”—collapses under the weight of basic historical literacy. The X doesn’t remove Christ. It replaces five English letters with His Greek initial. That’s not subtraction. That’s compression. It’s theological efficiency.
And once again, this is how it always goes. God doesn’t lose to word games. He doesn’t get canceled by abbreviations. He doesn’t panic over fonts, cups, or seasonal marketing campaigns. Truth has a long memory, and history keeps receipts.
So yes—write Christmas if you want. Write Xmas if you want. Either way, Christ is still there, staring back at you from the Greek alphabet, smirking a little.
God wins again.
History backs Him up.
And the “gotcha” moment?
Turns out it belongs to Him.
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David, an outstanding article, I’m going on 70 and that X thing has bugged me for a long time!
XXX 🙂