After School Fun

Listen up, short children! This here's an Advent-Aware edition of This Blog and You. As many of you don't know, I have been working in an after-school program at a local community center as a part of my practicum for a ministry class I am presently undertaking. The children that attend this after-school program (which I shall henceforth refer to as 'ASF') are aged 5-12 and are generally horrible little monsters that frighten and irritate me.

Today I was assisting one of these hapless ASF urchins with his homework, which involved writing out several seasonally-appropriate vocabulary words. When we came to the word "Christmas" he asked, "Why does Christmas have a 't' in it? It doesn't sound like it needs it." Overjoyed at the opportunity to spread some etymological cheer, I smiled and said, "You're right, it doesn't sound like it needs a 't,' does it? But you see, it all began when the Catholic church invented it sometime in the fourth century. Well, they didn't invent it so much as co-opt it from pagans, but they did a very nice job of it! And when Catholics all get together to have a good time or to celebrate something, they call it a 'Mass.' At Christmas time, the Catholics decided that they should all get together and celebrate Christ, so they called it a 'Christ Mass' but they were all so excited about celebrating that they started to run their words into one another and before you know it, they were all wishing one another a 'Merry Christmas!' and everybody thought that was a really good idea so now we all do it!" My charge stared at me slightly slack-jawed, soaking up all my yule-tide wisdom like a manila sponge. "Wow... I wondered if it was something like that!"

-Ryan