Christmas- What it Really Means

          I always associated Christmas with Christ. For me, the reason we celebrate is because of Christ, so I didn’t really ever think more of the word. Before reading this article, if I would have thought about it, I would have come up with Christ- meaning Jesus or holy one and -mas must be a suffix meaning day or full of. Christmas is Christ’s day or a day full of Christ. In actuality, Christmas came from the Old English words Cristes maesse. That meant the festival masses of Christ; through time the words were pushed together and now we see it as just one word.

            Christmas is one of many holidays. The word holiday has been changed over time. In Old English it was haligdaeg and meant holy day. No longer is it really translated as holydays, so we have holidays that are not necessarily holy, like Labor Day and Halloween.

            Interestingly enough, the term gospel means the same as godspell. We talked about the translation of this in class, so I knew it before reading it. Originally I thought godspell meant good luck, but actually godspell and gospel originate back to good news. This makes sense because the gospel brought the good news to the people. Manger in French means to eat, so Jesus was born in a manger, which originally was cow’s box to eat out of.

            Last is the difference between Xmas and Christmas. I always thought Xmas was taking Christ out of Christmas. Little did I know that Xristos in Greek means Christ. This is just a way that the Greek’s say Christmas based on their language and is actually used in the Greek Orthodox Church. 

http://www.verbivore.com/archolid2.html#xmas09

Words- 280

Posts- 60 and 61