Put Mass Back into Christmas

Christmas is not a holiday. It is a major religious feast, one of only two major feasts which the Roman Catholic Church has retained an octave to celebrate! An 8 day liturgical feast! Without Holy Mass, it does not exist: Christ’s Mass, is the origin of Christmas. Anything less than Holy Mass at Christmas, is counterfeit, softened by sentiment and consumerism.

The call to “put Christ back into Christmas” may sound harmless, or even virtuous, but in Ireland, of all places, it misses the real point. Honesty is required if we are serious about defending Christmas, Christ, His teachings, and His one true Catholic Church.

The fact of this matter is that Christmas belongs to the Catholic Church, and should not be viewed as a neutral Christian festival shared equally by all denominations. It is a Catholic feast, formed by Catholic belief and sustained by Catholic worship.

The term Christmas literally means “Christ’s Mass,” which comes from the old English term Cristesmæsse, a combination of the Greek word Christos (Messiah) and the Latin word Missa (Mass) - clearly highlighting that it is to be a holy day of obligation centred on the Eucharist and worship.

It is a day set aside by Catholic Christendom, to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ with a special Mass, the central act of worship and thanksgiving in the Catholic Church. Without the Mass, Christmas simply does not exist in its original or authentic form; it’s a day hijacked by the world. All that profess to be Catholic, yet refuse to honour this and go to Mass on Christmas Day, are either real life Protestants, impostors, heathens, or just willfully ignorant.

You cannot preserve the true meaning of Christmas, or merely attempt to preserve it, by rejecting Christ's Mass. Putting Mass back into Christmas is about truth. Ireland is a Catholic country, not Protestant, and Christmas begins where it always has: at the altar.

The Holy Mass

At Christmas, practicing Catholics do not gather simply to hear a sermon, sing hymns, or exchange greetings, they come to unite themselves with the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, receiving Him truly present in the most august sacrament of the Eucharist.

The Mass is the unbloody sacrifice of Jesus’ body and blood, offered under the appearances of bread and wine for the living and the dead. It fulfills Christ’s command to his apostles on Holy Thursday, to “do this in remembrance of me,” serving God as worship, thanksgiving, and supplication.

The priest, acting in the person of Christ, offers the consecrated bread and wine on behalf of the Church, uniting the faithful with His offering and drawing all into true communion with God.

Protestant Hypocrisy

Many Protestants claim to defend Christmas, yet they openly ignore the one thing that defines the feast: the Holy Mass. They celebrate Christmas with trees, carols, and family gatherings, but cannot participate in the Eucharist, the source and summit of the feast. At the same time, they loudly decry Muslims or foreigners “changing Ireland” or “taking over Christmas,” focusing on superficial cultural concerns while dismissing the very thanksgiving to God,  that preserved Irish faith, culture and identity for centuries.

They claim to uphold tradition and morality, yet reject the devotion, thanksgiving and sacrifice that makes Christmas, Christmas! In truth, those who ignore the Holy Mass, at this very foundational feast of Christmas, are impostors: they benefit from the Catholic faith that sustained the nation, yet refuse to see the truth and convert.

Catholics who have fallen away from the Church through apostasy, heresy and hardened hearts, and Protestants, who reject the Holy Mass, have already reduced Christmas to a secular worldly holiday. Despite their verbal protests to put Christ back into Christmas, their very lives betray this verbal outcry, since it's their rejection of Christ and His Church, which have ultimately led to Christmas becoming a watered down, fake, imposturous cultural and worldly holiday. It is they who have already removed Christ from Christmas, yet they get outraged when Christmas markets are called winter markets, to appease non Catholic foreigners who have moved to our Catholic country. 

Whilst “Putting Christ back into Christmas” sounds pious at a surface level, it’s a cover up, it dodges the real issue. Christ's Mass has been removed from Christmas. It's now the holiday season. The war to remove the Mass from not just Christmas, but Western Civilisation, has been raging for years. The attack on the True Church and the Mass has not happened by accident. It happened because the devil knows what he is doing. The trickle began with Protestantism, secularism, and naturalism, which led to Christmas being slowly stripped of its Catholic identity - the nourishment to strengthen our souls for the battle with the devil is what sustained our nations since the beginning of Christendom.

Is it any wonder the modern style in which Christmas is celebrated feels hollow? It is full of superficial symbols, silliness, gluttony, and debt. Sadly in many homes and families, Christmas, devoid of Christ's Mass, is completely empty of the reverence and awe which should accompany the commemoration of God becoming man.

People defend Christmas trees, lights, advertisements, carols, and greetings while dismissing the one thing that actually defines the feast. A Christmas without Mass is not “traditional” Christianity – it is a Protestantised substitute, veiled further, by consumerism and sentimentality, in the hope that people will not notice that it's ultimately a rejection of Christ and his Holy Mass.

Ireland's History

In Ireland, the true, traditional meaning of Christmas as a feast day has always been by the Mass, and defended at great cost. People were once fined, imprisoned and killed for attending that Mass. Priests said Christmas Mass on hillsides and in barns. Families walked miles, barefooted and hungry, to partake in the great offering. They did not do this for sentiment or tradition. They did it because without the Mass, there can be no Christs-mas.

Ireland knows what a Protestantised Christmas looks like. We lived under a system that outlawed the Mass while tolerating a stripped-down, sermon-based religion. The result was not spiritual depth but religious emptiness. When the Mass was removed, faith withered. That same pattern is repeating today, only now under the guise of modern culture rather than penal law.

When people in Ireland defend Christmas while ignoring Christmas Day Mass, they are siding with the very forces that once tried to erase it. You cannot honour the faith of your ancestors while discarding the centre of their devotion. Christmas in Ireland is Catholic. It was preserved by Catholics, paid for by Catholics, and sanctified by the Mass. If the Mass goes, Christmas goes with it.

Put Mass back into Christmas. Not because it sounds traditional, not because it is convenient, but because it is the truth of who we are, where we came from, and what has kept Irish faith alive for centuries. Without the Mass, there is no Christmas, only a shadow of what God intended.

Suggested reading: Irelands Loyalty to the Mass by Fr Augustine.