點解Christmas會叫做X-Mas?

其實 Xmas 的 X 不是英文字母，而是某一個希臘的字母的大寫。而 X 是希臘字「基督」的頭一個字母。看看下面的希臘字﹕


χριστου(希臘文) = Christ(英文) = 基督(中文)

基督
χριστου

Christ

所以 Xmas 其實同 Christmas 係一樣的。

Christ 是指基督；而 mas 是 mass 的簡寫，彌撒的意思。

Xmas" and "X-mas" are common abbreviations of the word "Christmas". They are sometimes pronounced "eksmas", but they, and variants such as "Xtemass", originated as handwriting abbreviations for the pronunciation "Christmas". The "-mas" part came from the Anglo-Saxon for "festival", "religious event": Crīstesmæsse or Crīstemæsse. This abbreviation is widely but not universally accepted; some view it as demeaning to Christ, whilst others find it a helpful abbreviation.

The word "Christ" and its compounds, including "Christmas", have been abbreviated for at least the past 1,000 years, long before the modern "Xmas" was commonly used. "Christ" was often written as "XP" or "Xt"; there are references in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as far back as 1021 AD. This X and P arose as the uppercase forms of the Greek letters χ and ρ), used in ancient abbreviations for Χριστος (Greek for "Christ"), and are still widely seen in many Eastern Orthodox icons depicting Jesus Christ. The labarum, an amalgamation of the two Greek letters rendered as ☧, is a symbol often used to represent Christ in Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christian Churches.[1]

Some people believe that the term is part of an effort to "take Christ out of Christmas" or to literally "cross out Christ";[2] it is also seen as evidence of the secularization of Christmas, as a symptom of the commercialization of the holiday (as the abbreviation has long been used by retailers). It may also be used as a vehicle to be more inclusive, see political correctness.

希臘文的X，好像不是整個唸做Chris，
是希臘文「基督」這個單字，第一個開頭字母就是X，
所以就直接取X字母，來代寫整個基督的Christ。

至於為什麼要採用希臘字？
因為在當時的希臘化時代，
新約聖經是用哲學知識份子所普遍使用的希臘文來寫的，
因此Xmas的結合用法很早就出現了。

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誤用問題，
西方人很少誤寫成X'mas的，
他們真正誤用的，只有寫成X-mas還比較常見。
所以外國人應該看不懂X'mas，
X'mas的誤用，也很可能不是從西方過來的。

至於誤用的源頭在哪？這裡有個小調查，
http://homepage1.nifty.com/hidex/goyo/xmas.html
這個站長說，X'mas很有可能是日本人自己的誤用。

因為臺灣受到日本文化影響滿大的，
所以也很有可能把X'mas的誤寫，一起引了進來。

請參考以下網頁，希望你睇得明啦