If you’re anything like me, you learned as a kid that Christmas is literally “Christ + Mass.” But I’ll admit that as I never understood how or why we pronounce those vowels differently than we do the two words on their own, or (back then) why it’s the one holiday we today still use that formation for (in America…particularly Protestant America.)
So Christ is from the Greek christos, meaning “messiah, savior.” It would have been pronounced like “KREES-tohs.” The i makes a long e sound, and the o is also long. Interestingly, when spoken quickly that ee sound turns into a short i sound. So Christmas actually retains more of the original pronunciation of Christ than, well, Christ does. No long i should be in the word! 😉
Mass, of course, refers to a eucharistic service in the Catholic church (and hence the early church, when the holiday was set). This isn’t just a “church service,” but one in which there is communion; and this one, in particular, is one that honors the birth of Jesus. I have written much about the origins of the Church holiday and how it gained popularity specifically to combat Arianism, which claimed that Jesus was not born the Savior, fully God–that He was instead born fully human, and it wasn’t until His baptism that God gave Him a divine spirit as well. This mass set aside to honor His birth was a deliberate celebration of Jesus being born as the Son of God, fully God and fully man. The celebration was also deliberately escalated, catchy songs written for it, so that the people would cling to that important teaching…and to counteract the catchy tunes that the Arians had written with their own heretical claims.
Christmas has been written as a single word since the mid-1300s, that final s dropping off because Medieval scribes often eliminated double consonants unless they were needed as a pronunciation guide. The evolution of the word actually went like this:
Cristesmesse (literally “Christ’s Mass” — circa 1120s)
Christemasse (early 1200s)
Christmasse (mid 1200s)
Christmas (1300s onward)
The h got added in there as the spelling of Christ was normalized (to indicate a more gutteral k sound).
And I pray you all have a very Merry Christmas, full of worship, awe, and love.
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Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary. 
I’m new to your blog, Roseanne, but it stirred in me a marvelous realization. I hope I can express it.
Today I celebrated Christmas Eve with my brothers and sisters at Haywood Street Congregation, a ministry to “the most underserved” in Asheville, NC.
It is there that I see Christ being born, or manifested, in men and women every week, on some level or other.
Today we celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve. We partook of the Holy Eucharist, holy communion, or Mass, the celebration of Christ’s sacrifice and death, together. All sorts and conditions of humankind together. Christ was there, and lively, and enjoying it.
Celebrating Christ’s birth, Christ’s ongoing manifestation, and Christ’s sacrifice and death. All together. Altogether.
Is that not a holy mystery?