Keep 'the Mass' in 'Christmas'

     I remember where I was when I learned that Starbuck’s introduced their ‘minimalist red’ Christmas cups in 2015. I was in a Starbucks line. They had one on campus and I had a bunch of meal points to spend. Being the dutiful son I was considering getting my Pops a nicely roasted bag of overpriced coffee using money that was essential his, when I became aware of the controversy which was this: Starbucks was accused of removing any and all Christmas imagery from their yearly holiday cups for {gag} political correctness. What ensued was a proxy war on Christmas that reemerges every year hence to varying degrees.

     I recall being accosted by wide-eyed students, “Did you know that Starbucks employees aren’t allowed to say, ‘Merry Christmas?’ and ‘Starbucks wants to take Christ out of Christmas!’ and ‘Keep Christ in Christmas!’. Instead, I was told, employees had to say, ‘happy holidays’ or ‘merry x-mas.’ First, allow me to assure that I was tired, cold, and hungry – the perfect hat-trick of not giving an expletive (flying or otherwise). However, after mulling it over for a decade, I have decided to throw my two-cents in the holiday hullabaloo.

     First, let’s dissect the word ‘holiday.’ It’s a portmanteau of holy + day. To wish someone happy holidays is not religious persecution. It may be {gag} political correctness, but it is not persecution.

     Next on our linguistic sleighride, the abbreviation ‘X-mas’ means Christmas. Jesus is the Messiah. Messiah (a Hebrew term) in Greek is rendered Christ. Jesus [the] Christ in Greek looks like this: Ιησοûς Χριστûς. The first two letters of the Greek word Christ are chi (Χ) and rho (ρ) which look a lot like a Latin ‘x’ and ‘p,’ respectively. The chi-rho symbol ? (a superimposed letter chi [‘x’] on a rho [‘p’]) became the ipso facto abbreviation for Christ (it’s even persevered on a 4th-century Roman sarcophagus). It was so matter of fact that the first appearance of abbreviating ‘Christmas’ was not on 2015 media pages, but by a scribe in 1021 to save space.[1] The abbreviation stuck and continued to be used by posterity such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was happily ‘xmassing’ away in 1831.[2]

     Let’s unwrap the final layer of Christmastide etymology: Christmas is a shortened form of ‘Christ’s Mass.’ The Mass is what those Catholics do on Sundays and other holy days, and in fact on every day of the year except Good Friday before Easter.[3] The Mass is where ordinary bread and wine are consecrated and become the body and blood of Christ. In simpler terms, it is the renewal and perpetuation of the sacrifice of the cross. So, even when secular society attempts to take ‘Christ’ out of ‘Christmas,’ it incidentally leaves the Mass, the public celebration of Christ’s Passion and the “source and summit of the Christian life.”[4] It is a two-for-one deal. Just as there is no Christmas without Christ, there is also no Christmas without the Mass.

     So, my caffeinated comrades, let’s keep both Christ and His Mass in ‘Christmas’ this year giving the season “the veneration due to its sacred name and origin” (Fred, from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol).

[1] https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2012/12/xmas-the-ancient-and-grand-abbreviation/ 
[2] “Dear Southey, - On Xmas Day I breakfasted with Davy.” Philip Gengembre Hubert, The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 73 (Palala Press, 2015), 66.
[3] https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/no-communion-on-good-friday 
[4] CCC 1324; LG 11