ok, i remember some time ago someone mentioned something about he/she not liking people shortening 'christmas' to 'xmas'.  He/she said that it was wasn't good as it took away the true meaning of CHRISTmas, that is, to commemorate the birth of Christ.

Then after watching a show on channel8, i went to do some research, and realised that it was shortened NOT purely because of convenience sake, and not because 'x' looks like a cross so you can shorten it or whatever. There's a proper legitimate reason!


This short article is taken from "http://www.crivoice.org/cyxmas.html"
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The Origin of "Xmas"

The abbreviation of "Xmas" for Christmas, long reviled by many conservative and Low Church Christians, is not nearly as blasphemous as many contend. Rather than a sacrilegious removal of "Christ" from Christmas and replacing him with an unknown, as some claim, the "Xmas" abbreviation has a long history in the church. In Greek, the language in which the New Testament was first written, "chi" (c or C), which is almost identical to the Roman alphabet "X," is the first letter of the word "Christ" (cristoV, or as it would be written in older manuscripts, CRISTOS). In fact, the symbol of the fish in the early church came from using the first letter of several titles used for Jesus (Jesus Christ Son of God Savior) that when combined spelled the Greek word for fish (icquV, ichthus).

(Ok, if that's too chim to understand, i'll try to paraphrase it. in other words, X is almost like the first letter of the word Christ in Greek. So it was shortened not to 'devalue' the word to a symbol, but because it was originally the first letter of Christ anyway, so it was shortened for convenience. )

In the early days of printing when typesetting was done by hand and was very tedious and expensive, abbreviations were common. The church began to use the abbreviation C for the word "Christ" in religious publications. From there, the abbreviation moved into general use in newspapers and other publications, and "Xmas" became an accepted way of printing "Christmas."

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Another article can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xmas