Christmas or Xmas?

When I was in high school, I was told by a religious boffin that "Xmas" was anti-Christ. I was asked not to use it. Apparently Xmas was the absence of Christ in "Christmas". From my teenage mind then, this was how I depicted the explanation:


Since then, I have never used "Xmas" in greeting cards, email greetings and text messages. But it was during the period when internet was in its infancy and there was no such thing as Wikipedia, that I accepted the explanation.

Today I checked on this claim and found that it was true. However, it was not the only explanation. There was also an alternative explanation.

As the saying goes, "time will tell", so I did a search on "Xmas" (after more than a decade of ambiguity) and found this interesting take by Wikipedia:

""Christ" was often written as "XP" or "Xt"; .... 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."

Right, so now I've heard the other side of the story about Xmas and that it is not anti-Christ after all. In fact, there is no connection linking it to being one.

But as people continue to greet each other at this time of the year with Xmas or Christmas, I begin to ask if it really matters after all. People neither have the tendency to be anti-Christ nor meant to be disrespectful to the religion. I am sure we all meant well when we greet and wish each other. At worst, Xmas is just a shorter word to mean Christmas.

Having heard both sides of the story now will not change the way I write my Christmas greetings. I will still stick to Christmas. I am neither anti-Christ nor disrespectful to my own religion. And if I can address VIPs, who are mere mortals, by their titles when I meet them (like Datuk/Datuk Seri/Tan Sri in the case of Malaysians), I don't see why I can't write in full the name of a King, who's also a God.