Io, Saturnalia!
ALEXA, PLAY - Get The Party Started by P!nk
Ah, it’s finally here, Saturnalia! Saturnalia is the ancient Roman winter solstice festival. It originally was just celebrated on one day - 17th December, to honor Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture and abundance (and also the namesake of the grooviest planet in our solar system), but it became so popular that it very quickly was stretched out to a weeklong celebration from the 17th to the 23rd of December. It began, as I said, to honor Saturn and the official end of the harvest season, but stretching out the celebration also meant the ancient Romans could include their winter solstice celebration all in one! Throughout the land, you could hear people saying “Io, Saturnalia!” (ee-oh saturn-ay-lee-uh) very much the way we would say “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays”.
Saturnalia was a BIG party. Everyone would gather and feast and drink. There was music, dancing, singing, gambling, games and gladiator tournaments. Think of it as sort of the ancient Roman equivalent to Mardi Gras in New Orleans or Carnival in Brazil.
It was a time to let loose. Back then, (around the 2nd century BCE) the Roman day to day life was actually quite buttoned up. They were a hard-working community who rarely took days off. (There were no weekends!) There was also a strict dress-code in the Roman cities and people were quite formal. So a week-long holiday to celebrate the end of the very laborious harvest season was much deserved and anticipated.
In addition to businesses and work being suspended for the holiday, an interesting tradition was role reversal. (Not like that. Get your mind out of the gutter.) The wealthy businessmen and landowners would become the servants and tend to the needs of their staff. The slaves would be treated like royalty and everyone would get to party without the stigma of crossing class lines.
Title: The Romans in their Decadance
Artist: Thomas Couture
Year: 1847
The last day of Saturnalia was known as Sigillaria. This was when people would gather together for a large meal and exchange gifts (also known as sigillaria) very similar to the Christmas celebrations we have today. Some examples of gifts they would give would also be right at home under a modern Christmas tree – candles, games, pottery, fruit, wine, toys and figurines (though theirs would be wax or clay figures of Roman deities like Jupiter or Hercules instead of your plastic Black Panthers and Barbies of 2023).
It wasn’t until the 4th century CE when Christianity spread across Europe like the plague that people started to celebrate the birth of Jesus instead of worshiping the Roman gods. Funnily enough, because there is no mention of when exactly Jesus was born, the Christians adapted the 25th of December. This day was also important to the Romans, as it was when they would celebrate the birthday of Sol Invictus, meaning Invincible Sun, the Roman sun god. While the birthday of Sol Invictus wasn’t quite part of the Saturnalia, it was just a couple days after, so the Romans were still in a celebratory mood. Interesting that the Christians would “borrow” the birthday of the sky god from the Romans for their deity as well. Either way, it’s easy to see that many of the ancient Saturnalia traditions have found their way centuries later into the modern Christmas.
