In 1485, for example, it’s used in christened:ġ485 Rolls of Parliament. Of course, as we know, Christ is not just a stand-alone word, it also appears within other words (Christmas being the relevant example here). See if you can spot it on each of these pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5. 135v, a quiet little brown manuscript.Īnd oh wow in so many more places. The fanciest of manuscripts.Īnd in quiet little brown manuscripts, used as part of the normal text:īritish Library, MS Additional 37517 f. The Gospel of St Matthew in the Lindisfarne Gospels, the fanciest of manuscripts. It appears in the fanciest of manuscripts, taking up entire pages: It was ‘not really devised to lighten the labours of the scribe, but rather to shroud in reverent obscurity the holiest words of the Christian religion’.*
XMAS OLD MANUSCRIPT FULL
In such cases, the abbreviation is not used to save space or effort, but because that form has more power than the full words. XP is what we call a nomen sacrum, a sacred name, in which the symbol itself has power. As I’ve written about elsewhere, scribes love abbreviating, and they really love symbolism, and XP combines those two in one heady mixture. The Chi-Rho was already in use in Roman Britain, and it comes into use again by the Anglo-Saxons from the fifth century. To most of the western Christian world, this symbol was Christ. Most people were not literate in their own language, let alone in Latin or Greek and it’s very unlikely they recognised letters in the symbol. The Hinton St Mary mosaic from Roman Britain in the 4th century, AD.
Roman North Africa, 4th – 5th Century AD
The Chi-Rho was the go-to symbol, and is still used today.Ĭharles Thomas, in his Christianity in Roman Britain to AD 500, has two excellent illustrations showing its development and use in different contexts:Īnd here, for your enjoyment, are some other cool things from early Christian history with XP on them: Indeed, the Christian cross as we know it didn’t start to appear in art produced in the British Isles until the sixth century. All of a sudden this symbol had power across the Christian world. The Emperor Constantine adopted it, went into battle under it and won, and it took off. It had been used by pagan Greek scribes to mark notable or good things in the margins of texts, but in the 4 th century it merged with the Rho to become a symbol. The first character, the X, is called Chi (pronounced ‘kai’, to rhyme with ‘high’). The ‘X’ in Xmas comes from the Greek spelling of Christ, ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ. And it’s certainly not any less traditional. But the point stands writing Xmas is not taking the Christ out of Christmas. Any quick Google will tell you this, but I’m going to put it here. Xmas is no less full of Christ than Christmas in any way but spelling. Of course, I’m not here to tell you whether you should be offended by something or not, but I think opinions about this are interesting considering the history of Xmas. For others, it can be seen as ‘taking the Christ out of Christmas’, which is obviously something bad if you’re religious, but might be preferable for secular writers. For some, it’s a matter of principle, that they don’t like shortening or abbreviating words, or because Christmas is more proper and more traditional. A quick poll of my small corner of Twitter (disclaimer: I did this last year and was so slow to write the post that I saved it for this year) shows that pretty much everyone prefers to write Christmas over Xmas. This is a common complaint at this time of year and gets people really riled up. It’s Christmas!! I’m sitting here in my Fairisle knit jumper with reindeer and snowflakes on, I’m listening to Idina Menzel forcefully emote glorious Christmas music at me, and I still haven’t bought all my presents or finished putting the decorations up. The festive season is definitely upon us.Īll of that is slightly beside the point for the purposes of this blog post, but damnit, I just really love Xmas.
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