by Bifrost
At the Yule season, there is always comment about the "real" meaning of Christmas. Christians insist the only meaning of the holiday is the religious one derived from their particular mythology. While pagans and Jews sometimes refuse to use the word "Christmas" because of its religious connotations.
Actually, the word itself has strong pagan origins. The original meaning would be a shock to most modern Christians (though certainly early Christians understood its meaning completely.)
CHRIST: The word Christ is a Greek translation of the Hebrew- Aramaic
"messias" or "meshiach," which meant "anointed one." A messiah was, technically, a king. King Herod in the Christian New Testament was by definition a "Christ." So was the high priest. The reason why "king of the Jews" was supposedly used to describe Jesus is that he called himself the
"anointed one," which meant "king."
The Greek word is derived from the word "chrism" or "ointment." A Christ was someone or something covered with ointment, and the word was specifically used to describe certain wooden statues of gods with oiled phalluses. ("Thou anointest my head with oil" had quite a different meaning to the Greeks!)
Because the Greek word "christos" begins with a chi (X) and because the chi-cross was the universal symbol for the sun, the term Christ was usually applied to sun-deities, such as Mithras. In fact, for the first 300 years of the "Christian era," the leading religion of Rome was Mithraism, whose alternate name was "Christianity" or "religion of the ointment-covered one."
(It's interesting that "St." Augustine wrote that the priests of Mithras worshipped the same God as he!)
The word Christ, therefore, is simply an old Greek word for Mithras, the Persian sun-god.
-MAS. The "-mas" in Christmas refers, of course, to the Mass -- but not to the Roman Catholic mass. The "mass" referred to is the ritual meal of the Mithraists, who believed the meat and blood of a slaughtered bull actually became the body and blood of their god Mithras. (Does that sound familiar?)
This ritual food was called the "mazd" or "god." (The Zoroastrian deity Ahura Mazda literally meant "wise god.") The Mithraic priest would hold up the bloody meat and say: "Behold the God!" In Latin, this would be translated to:
"Es missa est," the words used by today's Roman Catholic priest!
Since the sun was "reborn" each year at the winter solstice (around December
25), the ritual meal would be most important at that time of year, which would have been called "Christmas" -- the "ritual feast of the god with an anointed phallus."
And since the chi-cross also stood for the sun, the term "X-mas" would have meant exactly the same thing.
Think about that next time someone wishes you a merry Christmas!
Reference: new-generation-witch.blogspot.com
