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FourWinds

10943 posts

Re: what ever has happened to avebury?

Jul 23, 2005, 19:58

Peter, please don't start this old argument up again. Using Xtian (which is pronounce Christian, just as Xmas is pronounced Chritmas) isn't offensive to the many Xtians I know and a lot of them use it themselves when writing.

People call me FW all the time. I could find that offensive, but I don't. When people read FW in a TMA post I'm sure they read it as FourWinds.

http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19981223

<i>Similarly, the name Christ has for a thousand years been abbreviated as X, which is not the Roman letter "eks," but the Greek letter "chi," standing for the first letter of Christ when written in Greek as "Christos" (as transcribed into Roman letters). Some of the words using this abbreviation are X, Xp (Greek chi-rho, or "Chr"), and Xt for "Christ," Xren for "christen," and Xtian for "Christian."

The use of Xmas for "Christmas" is first found in the sixteenth century, in the slightly expanded spelling X'temmas; the Xmas form was in use by the eighteenth century. The X has always been used in religious contexts, and was often lavishly decorated in manuscripts, for example the glorious Chi-Rho page of the Book of Kells, the ninth-century illuminated gospels. The assumption that the abbreviation is somehow "weak" or "irreligious" since it "removes" the Christ from "Christmas" is a thoroughly modern idea.</i>

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Re: what ever has happened to avebury? (PeterH)

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