You hear a lot of folks saying: Let's put "Christ" back in Christmas!
Good idea. But I wonder how many of them would be as keen on this idea, using the very same logic:
Let's put the "mass" back in Christmas (i.e. Christ's mass).
ADDED LATER: I'm not really arguing either way on this. I just think it is funny that many of the people who want Christ the center of the holiday and who use the name of the holiday as justification probably don't realize that the name of the holiday is really the "Mass of Christ." Christ is there, but so is the mass. Would non-Catholics really want this?
Don't get me wrong, I think secularizing the holiday is a bad idea, but this one argument makes me chuckle.
I think most Christians go to mass on or before Christmas (ie, Christmas Eve).
ReplyDeleteI just go to Mass at the last possible moment.
ReplyDeleteWhen is that? ;) Does the Catholic church have an 11:50pm Christmas Day mass?
ReplyDeleteWhat I was trying to communicate in this post is that "Mass of Christ" is really a Catholic term. Many non-Catholics want the Christ back in Christmas but I wonder how they would feel about putting the "mass" back in Christ's-mass?
ReplyDeleteI am not suggesting this should be a Catholic-only holiday by any means, but I just think it is funny because all the people who argue for a Christian-centered holiday based on the name.
(I still call services "masses" all the time... I was catechized properly. Non-Christians look at me weird when I say it, too.)
ReplyDeleteOh... like "mass" being a word for a service, which no one but Catholics really use as a term anymore?
ReplyDeleteCatholics use the term "mass", and so do some other denominations like the Ortodox, I believe.
ReplyDeleteBut many non-Catholics don't use the term "mass". Most Protestants use the term "worship service" or something else. The word "mass" has come to signify the communion itself and many Protestants especially do not have the same beliefs about the Eucharist nor do they practice it quite the same way.
So when fundamentalist Protestants argue for putting "Christ" back into "Christ's Mass" I have to chuckle.
I think the word mass comes from "en masse" which is like "go in peace to leave and serve the lord" and then people would leave "en masse" (i.e. as a group) to go out and do that.
I used ta go to this one in Cali that had about 70 Masses every Sunday, all of them packed. They had an 8 pm one. The day was like a marble drop and I was the marble. I was slowly rolling thru the day, looking at the clock, saying:"oh. I just missed another one." And then I would feel relief like I was staying home from school. "HA HA God, you can't see me staying home and I'm not sick either!!" Eventually I would go to the 8 pm one. Then again I think the mystical qualities of the Mass lend themselves well to night. Things seem more serious somehow.
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