most religions I am familiar dictate how to live. after all, its religion.
Ah. Christy signing slang.
I think youâre talking about the sign of the fish.
Fish is Ichthys (ÎΧÎÎĽÎŁ) in greek and was used as an acronym for âIesous Christos Theou Yios Soterâ (Jesus Christ Godâs Son Savior).
The Christogram that was most commonly used was XP (Chi-Rho) btw not X e.g. on roman labara (military standards).
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Such a practice would probably stem from Judaismâs practice of avoiding writing the name of God out in full due to not being allowed to erase typos, etc. As many early Christians were Jewish converts, it would easily carry over.
Have you ever listened to the never broadcast interview of Gene Simmons by Terry Gross recorded for Fresh Air? It is just the funniest thing ever - a kind of worlds colliding interview.
Here it is just as audio:
Spoiler alert
My favorite part is when he says the exact number of women he has slept with (mentioned in his book) and she wants to know how he counted that up. Well it turns out he had Polaroids of every woman. After he responds, you can hear Terry Grossâs jaw drop on the floor.
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Mostly just many years of studying Medieval manuscripts and calligraphy. Bonus: Xâs are pretty (apparently).
FWIW: âThe Christian Writerâs Manual of Style, while acknowledging the ancient and respectful use of âXmasâ in the past, states that the spelling should never be used in formal writing.â - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xmas
Yeah, thatâs one of the problems. They thump it instead of reading it and having a little think afterwards.
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Yes, but âChristâ isnât his name; itâs a title. The Jews have no problem using the title âLordâ as a substitute for the proper name of Godâthe tetragram.
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Arguably it changed its meaning over the centuries from a title to a name because it was increasingly being used as such.
The word Christ is derived from the Greek ΧĎΚĎĎĎĎ (Christos), which is a translation of the Hebrew ×ָ׊ִ×××Öˇ (Masiah), meaning the âanointedâ and usually transliterated into English as âMessiahâ. *
So technically, shouldnât it be Messiahsmas?
(* Wikepedia, what else?)
The important thing to learn from this post is that if an abbreviation is sensible, then one may not complain about its use. Thus, Christians are not permitted to complain about the use of Xmas as a bland, non-religious version of Christmas because X is just the first letter of the Greek word for Christ (and as the comments above point out, if they werenât uneducated morons they would know this). It doesnât matter why the abbreviation is used, or what it has come to mean to a group over the past few decades. Where this argument becomes neat is that we can easily extend it to whole words. There are a number of words that people avoid saying despite the fact that they have perfectly understandable origins.
Iâm shocked that bigots the world over havenât discovered this argument for themselves. Youâd think theyâd love the chance to defend their use of racist terms by claiming that itâs just a legitimate short form or a Latin term and that the other person shouldnât be offended by them.
/s
While I am aware that âXmasâ has been in use for many centuries and X has been in use even longer, I am also aware that there was a push in recent decades to prefer it as a more inclusive term (itâs what I was taught to do in Canadian public school).
Anybody whoâs anybody reads the Bible in the language Jesus spoke: koine GreekâŚ
Really? Because I have never heard secular people and atheists pushing for the use of âXmasâ as more inclusive (and I hang out with a lot of atheists and secular people). Celebrating solstice instead of Christmas, yeah. Calling Christmas Xmas, nope. (In fact, Iâd argue that thatâs a stupid way to secularize anything.) What I do hear lots of is religious people claiming secularists are going around trying ti get everybody to say Xmas.
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Hey, welcome back. I missed you.
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What I remember in Canadian public school is a morning prayer. And everyone being gathered in the gym to sing friggin carols.
Good to be back! Life can only run so much interference on virtuality 
Huh? The common spoken language in His place and era was Old Syriac aka Aramaic. Greek was the most common written language however.
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