Where Did The Term Christmas Come From

The origin of mass in the christian sense of the word is not entirely clear.

Where did the term christmas come from. The ritual of the mass involves the death of christ and the distribution of the host a word taken from the latin word hostiall meaning victim. The earlier term yule may have derived from the germanic jōl or the anglo saxon geōl which referred to the feast of the winter solstice the corresponding terms in other languages navidad in spanish natale in italian noël in french all. Where did xmas come from. Christmas christian festival celebrating the birth of jesus the english term christmas mass on christ s day is of fairly recent origin.

Where did it come from. Christmas or feast of the nativity is an annual festival commemorating the birth of jesus christ observed primarily on december 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people around the world. Of course we are not talking about the physical mass of christ s body. Where did exchanging gifts come from and what does god s word say about it.

The word mass means death and was coined originally by the roman catholic church and belongs exclusively to the church of rome. The word christmas comes from the combination of the words christ and mass but where did the x in xmas come from and what does it mean. A feast central to the christian liturgical year it is preceded by the season of advent or the nativity fast and initiates the season of christmastide which historically in the. The phrase dates back to 1038 more than 1 000 years after jesus christ was born while the word xmas originated in the 16th century.

It was first used in the mid 1500s x represents the greek letter chi the initial letter in the word χριστός chrīstos. In short christmas is strictly a roman catholic word. First of all the abbreviation predates by centuries its use in gaudy advertisements. The bibliotheca sacra states the interchange of presents between friends is a like characteristic of christmas and the saturnalia and must have been adopted by christians from the pagans as the admonition of tertullian plainly shows vol.

But the history of the word xmas is actually more respectable and fascinating than you might suspect. Did you know yeshua the messiah was born nowhere near december 25 but that was the birth day of the sun god sol invictus or mithras. Did you know december 25 was the concluding day of the pagan winter festival called the saturnalia.