Essential Feature
Christmas or Xmas?
Christmas is also sometimes known
and ‘rho’ to create a monogram (symbol)
as Xmas. Some people don’t think it’s
to represent the name of Jesus. This looks
correct to call Christmas ‘Xmas’ as that
like an X with a small p on the top:
takes the ‘Christ’ (Jesus) out of Christmas.
(As Christmas comes from Christ-Mass,
The symbol of a fish is sometimes used
the Church service that celebrated the
by Christians (you might see a fish sticker
birth of Jesus.)
on a car or someone wearing a little fish
badge). This comes from the time when
But that is not quite right!
the first Christians had to meet in secret,
In the Greek language
as the Romans wanted to kill them
and alphabet, the letter
(before Emperor Constantine became a
that looks like an X is
Christian). Jesus had said that he wanted
the Greek letter chi /
to
(pronounced ‘kye’ - it
followers ‘Fishers
make
his
rhymes with ‘eye’) which is the first letter
of
of the Greek word for Christ, Christos.
people started to
Men’,
so
use that symbol.
The early church used the first two letters
of Christos in the Greek alphabet ‘chi’
When two Christians met, one person
drew half a basic fish shape (often using
their foot in the dust on the ground)
and the other person drew the other half
of the fish. The Greek word for fish is
‘Ikthus’ or ‘Ichthys’. There are five Greek
letters in the word. It can also make up
a sentence of Christian beliefs ‘Ie-sous
Christos Theou Huios So-te-r’ which in
English means “Jesus Christ, Son of God,
If you light a green Christmas
tree with red and blue lights,
what does it become?
Brighter!
34
Saviour”. The second letter of these five
letter is X or Christos!
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