Talk:Xmas

message: 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)
thread_title: Notes

message: 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 you mean by "recent". AnonMoos 20:30, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: History question

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

message: 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 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)
thread_title:  Xmas or X'mas 

message: It can be X-mas, Xmas and X'mas.
But I think X-mas is the most common. DiamondDudu (talk) 12:24, 24 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: 2017

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

message: 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)
thread_title: Antiquity of usage of X for Christ

message: 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.
* http://christiansymbols.net/chi_rho_page.htm
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.
* http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=13693&lastnode_id=0
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)
thread_title:  Major Citation Problems 

message: I think the previous universality of Latin and Greek is a little idealized -- even by 1917, there were already complaints that the study of ancient Greek was fast-disappearing from the curriculum of U.S. high schools (see the Preface to "First Year of Greek" by James Turney Allen), and I doubt whether even then Latin was an absolute requirement in all cases for those who wanted to attend college...  Furthermore, knowledge of Latin without any knowledge of Greek would provide very little insight into "Xmas", so Latin would appear to be mostly irrelevant.  And is there any evidence for "Chimas"?   Also, pronunciations should generally be given in IPA, and the most accepted pronunciation of the Greek letter Chi in modern English is actually [kai]... AnonMoos (talk) 17:43, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Education decline?

message: Much of the discussion in the "erroneously" section above revolves around claims involving the belief that the use of "Xmas" is part of a concerted campaign to secularize Christmas, and whether or not that belief is in error. The disputed passages currently are part of the History section where they clearly do not belong. As a first step in settling the discussion and cleaning up the article, we need to create a "Controversy" section and move the material there. Specifically, at least the following passages should be relocated.
This will have at least the following advantages:
* Those looking specifically for a discussion on the controversy will be able to find it, rather than having to pick it piecemeal out of several sections.
* It'll make possible an expanded, focused treatment of the controversy, rather than the short shrift it currently gets.
* It will allow clean-up and tightening of sections such as the History section, which currently wanders all over the map.
* It just plain makes sense :-) 
CNJECulver (talk) 10:41, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal: Controversy section 

message: I'm attempting to fill in some of the [citation needed] tags in this section. 
1. occasionally held belief that the 'X' represents the cross on which Christ was crucified
I've just spent the last couple of hours trying to track down references to this "occasionally held belief", and I come up empty. Can anyone else supply a reference? If not, perhaps this passage should be removed.
2. X-as-chi was associated with Christ long before X-as-cross could be, since the cross as a Christian symbol developed later.
"Long before" and "developed later" are ambiguous. According to this, the cross was already associated with Christianity in the 2nd century. 
In any case, viz., the "X-as-cross" hypothesis, it is only necessary for the cross to predate "Xmas", not Chi-Rho, so the above seems irrelevant. CNJECulver (talk) 08:21, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I've removed the discussion about "X" representing the cross, the shape of the cross and "X" being a tribute to martyrs.  All uncited and not particularly relevant to the article anyway. Wikipeterproject (talk) 10:59, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Usage of "X" for "Christ" 

message: In the United Kingdom, The former Church of England Bishop of Blackburn, Alan Chesters, once recommended to his clergy that they avoid the spelling.
This sentence seems a bit problematic for a couple of reasons. First, it really belongs with the controversy discussion rather than in the "Usage in English" subsection. Second, neither the sentence itself, nor the source cited, makes clear why Chesters made the recommendation -- did he himself oppose the abbreviation, or was he merely doing so out of respect for those who did?
At the least it should be moved to the controversy discussion. But there are already several examples provided there, so it's really probably superfluous. And certainly, for the reason above, it's a weak example.
Perhaps it should just be removed. CNJECulver (talk) 10:31, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Alan Chesters reference 

message: I've replaced the [citation needed] tag for the Lewis Carroll reference in the "Usage in English" subsection with the same M-W article footnote used for Oliver Wendell Holmes, as the M-W article contains the citation.
The citation comes from a letter Dodgson (Carroll) wrote in 1864. That letter is reproduced in at least the Broadview Press edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Richard Kelley, ed.), p. 250. 
http://www.broadviewpress.com/product.php?productid=208&cat=0&page=1
The relevant page can be viewed at Google Books:
http://books.google.com/books?id=HJ8Wg0u7CUgC&pg=PA250&lpg=PA250&dq=%22which+I+hope+to+get+published+before+Xmas%22&source=bl&ots=Rsiboql_0b&sig=xU6zhGF8pGh6LluEa5yL85Cs_-c&hl=en&ei=x3E_S5WLEYf8tAP027CHBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CBsQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=%22which%20I%20hope%20to%20get%20published%20before%20Xmas%22&f=false
I'd add the reference myself. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to do references in Wikipedia yet. Anyone want to add it? CNJECulver (talk) 17:20, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lewis Carroll reference 

message: What really is asking to be cited? --Moni3 (talk) 13:56, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I think December21st2012Freak is asking for a citation for the "X-mas" (mis)spelling only. CNJECulver (talk) 11:33, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, but why? Who, besides December21st2012Freak, is saying this is likely to be contested? I do not understand what is controversial about the hyphen. --Moni3 (talk) 14:07, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I removed "X-mas".  If it's of significance, it could be included elsewhere in the article, but (as far as I can determine) it's not widely (mis)used enough to warrant inclusion in the lead.  Wikipeterproject (talk) 22:45, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cite needed for X-mas? 

message: I was always told X-mas and X-ing came from X being a turned 'cross' and cross represents christ. Therefore you get 'cross'ing and 'christ'mas  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.208.192.190 (talk) 14:14, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: "Xing" for "Crossing" is kind of a late development.  "X" as an abbreviation of the name of Christ goes back to ancient Greek... AnonMoos (talk) 14:19, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: From the lede of the article: "the "X" comes from the Greek letter Chi, which is the first letter of the Greek word Χριστός, translated as "Christ". 71.234.215.133 (talk) 14:21, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: X-mas origination

message: AnonMoos (talk) 07:47, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Another century-old image

message: "There is a common misconception that the word Xmas is a secular attempt to remove the religious tradition from Christmas[3] by taking the "Christ" out of "Christmas"."
I propose taking this line out of the lede. There's no way one blanket statement can account for every use of "Xmas", not everyone in the English language, including those that use the phrase "Xmas", knows that X comes from the Greek work for Christ. CRRaysHead90 | Get Some! 03:20, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't really see the wording as problematic but I tweaked it to say "...the word Xmas stems from a secular..." to keep the focus on the etymology of the word, which is what the article is basically focusing on. If the community doesn't like this, I don't object to my edit being undone. Against the current (talk) 04:42, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

text: CR90/CRRaysHead90 -- I don't see what the problem is -- it is a somewhat common misconception, and nothing that you've said contradicts this. AnonMoos (talk) 09:27, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Blanket statement 

message: I've removed the parenthetical comment " (This last usage is most probably as a space saving abbreviation.)" from the In popular culture Monopoly reference. Unless someone can find a statement from Parker Brothers that this is the case, this seems to be pure authorial conjecture.
220.143.198.161 (talk) 01:31, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Monopoly referenced included unsourced authorial conjecture 

message: See here the use of the variant "Xtmas" in a 1913 letter (authorial ephemera added to the book scanning, very good idea) by John Batchelor, a Christian missionary. (One who obviously lived for decades in Hokkaido trying to convert locals by translating the Bible to Ainu and going broke in the process only as a cover-up for his devious plan for the secularization Christmas, culminating in this letter!) Tuvalkin (talk) 17:58, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: (Oh, he kinda looks like Santa: That explains it!) Tuvalkin (talk) 18:04, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Xtmas