I got this from Wikipedia:

After the conversion of Anglo-Saxon Britain in the early 7th century, Christmas was referred to as geol, the name of the pre-Christian solstice festival from which the current English word ‘Yule’ is derived. The word “Christmas” is a contraction meaning “Christ’s mass.” It is derived from the Middle English Christemasse and Old English Cristes mæsse, a phrase first recorded in 1038. Dutch has a similar word, Kerstmis often shortened to Kerst. The words for the holiday in Spanish (navidad), Portuguese (natal), French (noël), Italian (natale), and Catalan (nadal) refer more explicitly to the Nativity. In contrast, the German name Weihnachten means simply “hallowed night.”

[I wonder if our Bahasa Malaysia's Hari Natal is derived from Italian.]

Christmas is sometimes shortened to Xmas, an abbreviation that has a long history. In early Greek versions of the New Testament, the letter (chi), is the first letter of Christ. Since the mid-sixteenth century, or the similar Roman letter X, was used as an abbreviation for Christ.

You can read Zewt’s blog on his views of what is the ‘X’ in Xmas.

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