Talk:Xmas

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Can anyone put a link to this page anywhere at Wikipedia?? User 66.32.154.142

It's linked to from the first section of Christmas, which is pretty high-profile. Whatlinkshere also provides a couple more places. -- pne 05:39, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Can somebody mention that X MAS (X being a Roman number 10, 10th pronounced as "decima" in Italian) is also a fascist military group

Contents

[edit] History question

Is it possible that the Xmas is actually result of phonetic similarity? Christ-mas sounds alike Criss-mas, and X being taken as sign for criss from the criss-cross game? I don't fint it convincing that X is taken from some old symbol. Why that symbol and, even more imnportant, why only recently? -- 17:04, 25 December 2006 83.131.199.65

You may find these symbols obscure, but they were extremely important in the Christianity of late antiquity and the middle ages (see Labarum, Christogram, etc.). Furthermore, the OED traces "Xmas" back to 1755, "Xstmas" back to 1799, and "X'temmas" back to 1551, so I'm not sure what uyou mean by "recent". AnonMoos 20:30, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Greek for Christ?

"Christos, which is Greek for Christ"

Well, no. Christ is English for Christos. Perhaps that should be changed to something like "Christos, the Greek original that gives us Christ in English". Or am I being just a little too pedantic? --Patrick T. Wynne 08:35, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

The Greek words Christé mas which mean "Our Christ" are at the origin of the word Christmas. And, consequently, also for Xmas, which is the Latin transliteration of the Greek abbreviation Ch(risté) mas or Χ(ριστε) μας. I'm going ahead with the appropriate amendment.
The current entry for Xmas also claims that "Greek is the language in which the whole New Testament was written". (Greek was the lingua franca of the period.)This is probably correct, but it is still being disputed - as the relevant wikipedia entry itself for the Bible states! I.e. "The New Testament is widely agreed to have originally been written in Greek, although some scholars hypothesize that certain books (whether completely or partially) may have been written in Aramaic before being translated for widespread dissemination. One very famous example of this is the opening to the Gospel of John, which is argued to be, perhaps, a Greek translation of an Aramaic hymn."
The Gnome 14:15, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

There are all kinds of theories and speculations about the Bible, so that is not reason enough to change a Wikipedia entry like this. Greek is the only language to be found in the original manuscripts, and Greek is the best language for understanding the Bible. And, are you sure that it is a Latin transliteration? People have known Greek in the Latin world for a long time (it was the language spoken by the common people in Rome before Latin), so isn't it possible they were simply using the Greek letters 'Chi' and 'Rho'? It is modern man who has neglected Greek (and Latin). poopsix 09:11, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Rather than Christ being English for Christos or Christos being Greek for Christ, isn't Christos the Greek translation of the Hebrew word that is translated as Messiah in English? Said translation having been made in the Septuagint?

Also... does anyone know modern or (anything about the pronounciation of) biblical Greek? I am suspicious that the person who wrote This apparent usage of "X" to spell the syllable "kris" (rather than the sounds "ks") is saying that based upon a knowledge of Russian rather than Greek, because in Russian the Cyrillic glyph that corresponds to Greek Chi is pronouced "ks". I always thought it made a sound like the English 'k' in Greek, but maybe I think that only because of the math classes I've taken.Struthious Bandersnatch 05:29, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Labarum

Labarum whould be a great addition to the article. --Abdull 19:35, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Xmas or X'mas

Could someone tell me which is most correct and most common?

Regards,

Matthew Vetrini -- 03:18, 28 January 2006

Xmas is more common. It's hard to see why X'mas would be considered more "correct", since there's no real real contraction in the ordinary sense -- rather the "X" stands for all of the letters C-h-r-i-s-t. AnonMoos 12:41, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

X-mas is also very common in the United States, especially as an abbreviation for signs outside of stores. I don't know about other countries. poopsix 09:12, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Weasely language removed

I've removed the following passages from the article, and was reverted, citing a need for clarification.

"As origins of the word go largely unnoticed by the larger public, many people believe that the term is part of an effort to "take Christ out of Christmas" or to literally "cross out Christ"; it is also seen as evidence of the secularization of Christmas or a vehicle for pushing political correctness, or as a symptom of the commercialization of the holiday (as the abbreviation has long been used by retailers). This notion is greatly disputed."

I removed this because there are no citations indicating:

  1. The origins of the word go largely unnoticed
  2. Many people believe the term is part of an effort to "take Christ out of Christmas"
  3. Anyone believes it's a symptom of commercialization
  4. Any of these notions are "greatly disputed".

I've also removed:

"The occasionally seen belief that the "X" represents the cross Christ was crucified on has no basis in fact; St Andrew's Cross is X-shaped, but Christ's cross was probably shaped like a T or a †. Indeed, X-as-chi was associated with Christ long before X-as-cross could be. (The Greek letter Chi Χ stood for "Christ" in the ancient Greek acrostic ΙΧΘΥΣ ichthys.) While some see the spelling of Christmas as Xmas a threat, others see it as a way to honor the martyrs. The use of X as an abbreviation for "cross" in modern abbreviated writing (e.g. "Kings X" for "Kings Cross") may have reinforced this assumption."

Because there are no citations indicating that anyone holds the belief that the X represents the cross. Without that assertion, the information about St. Andrew's Cross becomes irrelevant. The next two sentences are pure speculation, especially the first one: "While some see the spelling of Christmas as Xmas a threat, others see it as a way to honor the martyrs"? This is a completely unverified fluff statement. JDoorjam Talk 15:51, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

No, some do see it as a threat, but they don't know Greek. This is a claim that is hard to cite, because it is some peoples' opinion, and that opinion is not shared by all, and so is not often found in easily citably sources. poopsix 09:16, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Unconstructive major surgery

If you don't like this article, why don't you attempt to improve it, instead of just hacking away large chunks of it with a chainsaw? Dealing with specific points might be constructive, but just deleting whatever you don't like does nothing to improve the article in any specific way. AnonMoos 21:58, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I am attempting to improve it, by demanding we provide citations. Do you have citations for any of the points I've raised? policy says we need 'em for those passages to be in the article. JDoorjam Talk 22:14, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Here's how those passages currently stand, citation-wise:
"As origins of the word go largely unnoticed by the larger public[citation needed], many people believe that the term is part of an effort to "take Christ out of Christmas"[citation needed] or to literally "cross out Christ"[citation needed]; it is also seen as evidence of the secularization of Christmas [citation needed] or a vehicle for pushing political correctness{[fact}}, or as a symptom of the commercialization of the holiday (as the abbreviation has long been used by retailers)[citation needed]. This notion is greatly disputed.[citation needed]
"The occasionally seen belief[citation needed] that the "X" represents the cross Christ was crucified on has no basis in fact; St Andrew's Cross is X-shaped, but Christ's cross was probably shaped like a T or a †.[citation needed] Indeed, X-as-chi was associated with Christ long before X-as-cross could be. (The Greek letter Chi Χ stood for "Christ" in the ancient Greek acrostic ΙΧΘΥΣ ichthys.) While some see the spelling of Christmas as Xmas a threat,[citation needed] others see it as a way to honor the martyrs.[citation needed]
The use of X as an abbreviation for "cross" in modern abbreviated writing (e.g. "Kings X" for "Kings Cross") may have reinforced this assumption.[citation needed]"
We need to clean that up. Again, can you provide sources for any of this? If not, it shouldn't be in the article. JDoorjam Talk 22:18, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Additional info

There's some additional info currently at Secularization_of_Christmas#Early_20th_century ... AnonMoos 15:41, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Or Christmas controversy (those articles seem to merge and split and change names so often, I'm not sure if that's the same article or not...) AnonMoos 13:09, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Antiquity of usage of X for Christ

The article uses the Anglo-Saxon chronicle as an example of early usage of "X" for "Christ", bu his can be pushed back farther. The Irish Gospel Books (Book of Durrow, Book of Kells, etc) all used "Xp" as an abreviation when it apears as the first word in the Latin translation of Matthew 1:18. We have images of Durrow (here) and Kells (here). Durrow dates to the 7th century and Kells to about 800. Dsmdgold (talk) 16:36, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Major Citation Problems

My opinion on the article as a whole in to be determined, as I haven't researched it thoroughly, and it's not very important to me, personally. But the fact remains that the authenticity is highly unlikely to most readers who do background checks. Two of the references that essentially make or break the facts in this article are, unfortunately, unreliable at best.

Besides that fact that I received a 404 error each time I attempted to view this particular page, the domain itself is not reliable either. Simply from its domain (.net), any information from the site is a moot point at best.

This just makes me sick. I love Wikipedia as a whole, and I'm constantly telling off people who generalize all Wikipedia articles as false with the totally unfounded complaint of "Anyone can go on there and type in anything they want!" Quite obviously, that is incorrect. Many events and persons of historic importance are protected in one way or another. But when anything has extreme amounts of attention brought to it, most people either turn to Wikipedia or wind up here. And whether or not the readers believe this, having such a pathetic "source" only gives that complaint more room to procreate. In short, that website (1) is a wide collaboration between strangers, (2) should not ever be considered as fact, (3) is a horrific mutilation of the purpose of The Wikipedia Project, especially considering that the complaint about Wikipedia is actually correct when applied to what someone has listed as an information source. Ryojo (talk) 20:55, 3 June 2008 (UTC)