> didn’t Xmas start being used exactly for that reason, i.e. to separate the event from religion.
No, its a Christian abvreviation originating from the ancient use of the greek Chi (visually identical to Latin X), sometimes along with Rho (Latin P) — the first two letters of Christ in Greek — as an abbreviation for Christ. Itsl dates back to, IIRC, the 16th C with similar forms back to the medieval period.
Its been railed about as originating in a modern attempt to de-Christianize (or even explicitly paganize) Christmas more recently, but that is completely ahistorical.
Whatever its origins, I have the distinct impression that, in addition to being a shorthand, it is used commonly to disambiguate Secular Christmas from Christian Christmas. I agree that Fox News blows this out of proportion and isn't correct on minutia about its origins, but that doesn't mean it isn't commonly used to distinguish between secular and religious variants which is IMHO the more substantial point.
> ... didn’t Xmas start being used exactly for that reason, i.e. to separate the event from religion.
No lol, that's just what Fox news said when they were talking about the "War on Christmas". It's a historical typographical thing where X was used as an abbreviation for Christ, you can look it up. Nothing about trying to separate it from religion.
... didn’t Xmas start being used exactly for that reason, i.e. to separate the event from religion.
I didn’t grow up believing in Jesus, but I definitely believed in Santa Claus.