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Dennis Jones is a Jamaican-born international economist, who has lived most of the time in the UK and USA, and latterly in Guinea, west Africa. He moved back to the Caribbean in 2007. This blog contains his observations on life on this small eastern Caribbean island, as well as views on life and issues on a broader landscape, especially the Caribbean and Africa.

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Monday, December 24, 2007

Christmas: a little history and etymology

Most countries that celebrate Christmas do so on December 25; however, in many countries the main event is Christmas Eve (December 24). The word Christmas originated as a contraction of "Christ's mass". Its origin is from the Middle English word "Christemasse" and the Old English phrase "Cristes mæsse", which was first recorded in 1038 and is a compound from Old English derivatives of the Greek "christos" and the Latin "missa". In early Greek versions of the New Testament, the letter Χ (chi), is the first letter of Christ. Hence, Xmas is often used as an abbreviation for Christmas.
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Posted by Dennis Jones at 12/24/2007 02:14:00 pm

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