Christ's Mass

Editor's Note: Our 3-Minute Catechesis is on vacation until the first of the year. In the meantime we invite you to enjoy this 3-Minute from our archives.

As we approach the Holy Day this [coming Sunday], it’s important for us to stop for a moment and examine the origins of this great feast on the Church’s calendar.

The word Christmas is a contraction of the words “Christ’s Mass,” and it is the Mass that celebrates Jesus’ birth. But is December 25^th really Jesus’ birthday? The truth is that we don’t know and that it doesn’t matter. We’re celebrating the fact that He was born – that God chose to come among us as one like us. The date of his birth was unimportant to the Fathers of the Church – that he was born is all that mattered.

Before the birth of Jesus, the Romans celebrated Dies Natalis Invicti Solis or the “Birthday of the Unconquered Sun” at the Winter Solstice, December 21^st – the shortest day of the year. The festival was celebrated with feasts and merrymaking to welcome the light coming back into the world.

In the year 350, Pope Julius the 1st declared that Christ’s birth would be celebrated on December 25^th. There is little doubt that he was trying to make it as painless as possible for pagan Romans (who remained a majority at that time) to convert to Christianity. The new religion was a bit easier to swallow, knowing that their feasts would not be taken away from them. So the merrymaking went from celebrating the sun returning to warm the world to the celebration of the Son of God coming as the Light of the World.

Most historians would agree that the celebration of Christmas as we know it today with Yule logs and evergreen trees began in Germany in the early 16^th century. But it wasn’t until 1870 when President Ulysses S. Grant declared that Christmas would be a federal holiday that workers began to get the day off to celebrate the feast. Recall Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol asking Bob Cratchit if he intended to take the whole day off. Most people took a little time off for Mass and then returned to their jobs.

In the years since 1870, many have begun to lose the meaning behind Christmas. Those of us who believe that God came to earth as one of us know that Christmas means giving thanks and praise to He who is our light and the Light of the World.

So with confidence we can pray, “Come, Lord Jesus, Come.” Let us strive to hand on the light of faith to future generations until He comes again at the end of time.