The Name Christmas

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 24, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 52.

The Name Christmas

The very name Christmas is, in its origin, idolatrous. It comes from the words “Christ” and “mass,” the latter signifying not a commemorative sacrament, but one in which the bread and wine are transmuted into the very body and blood of Christ, and again offered, immolated, as a sacrifice. This is directly contrary to a plain declaration of Holy Writ that the “offering of the body of Jesus Christ” was made “once for all;” and that He offered “one sacrifice for sins forever.” Heb. 10:10, 12. That Sacrifice holds to the end, and its merits are continually presented before God in the person of our Advocate, Jesus Christ. The outward, visible, pseudo-sacrifice of the mass is one of the strongest supports to an exclusive pseudo-priesthood. All of God’s people are priests, nay, more, kings and priests, a “royal priesthood” (Rev. 1:5; 1 Peter 2:9), and they offer up “spiritual sacrifices” of thanksgiving, of service, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (Heb. 13:15; 1 Peter 2:5; Rom. 12:1). Whenever men substitute the physical for the spiritual, the earthly for the heavenly, they shut away Christ Jesus, and put in His place a god that can not save. The very name “Christmas” is only one evidence of the idolatry that came into the early church and has been perpetuated ever since.