When I was in school, I was taught that the suffix "-mas" tacked onto the name of any feast actually came from an Old English word meaning "feast." Hence "Candlemas" means "feast of candles." The idea that it means "Mass" actually started during the Cromwell era, when people were forbidden to call it "Christmas" because it *sounded* too much like "Mass," and the Cromwellian Puritans were violently anti-Catholic. They called it "Christ-tide" instead.
When I was in school, I was taught that the suffix "-mas" tacked onto the name of any feast actually came from an Old English word meaning "feast." Hence "Candlemas" means "feast of candles." The idea that it means "Mass" actually started during the Cromwell era, when people were forbidden to call it "Christmas" because it *sounded* too much like "Mass," and the Cromwellian Puritans were violently anti-Catholic. They called it "Christ-tide" instead.