Saturnalia was dedicated to the god Saturn and was just one of a series of Roman festivals celebrated at midwinter. Its festivities lasted for a week, during which normal life was suspended in favor of eating, drinking, gift giving and social subversion. Despite its pagan origins, many continued to celebrate Saturnalia well into the Christian era. Even when the Roman empire dropped the Midwinter celebration as an official festival, Saturnalia survived by bequeathing many of its elements to the celebration of Christmas.
The Celebrations of Saturnalia
On December 17, a public banquet at the temple of Saturn marked the opening of the celebrations of Saturnalia. During most of the year, Saturn or Saturnus’s statue remained within his temple, physically and metaphorically bound. At the Saturnalia, the statue and so by implication Saturnus himself were released from these bonds. For the period of his festival, Saturnus was King.
During the rule of Saturnus, the god dictated that all the social norms should be inverted. ‘During my week the serious is barred,‘ Saturn tells his priest in Lucian’s Saturnalia, ‘no business allowed. Drinking and being drunk, noise and games and dice, appointing of kings and feasting of slaves, singing naked, clapping of tremulous hands, an occasional ducking of corked faces in icy water, –such are the functions over which I preside.
So, for the period of the Saturnalia, pleasure rules Rome. Criminals could not be convicted, or wars started. Each household would choose a King of the festival by lot to preside over their parties and celebrations. People spent their time playing games, gambling, eating and drinking. Roles would reverse within the household as masters served their slaves, dressing informally. Some even went so far as to wear the traditional slave’s hat, the pilleus, a brimless felt cap worn by slaves during manumission.
Gift giving was a significant part of the Saturnalia. Traditional gifts were pottery figures called sigilla as well as wax candles, purchased at the fair that marked the closing days of Saturnalia. However, as time passed, gifts became more ostentatious, so much so that legislation had to be implemented to prevent the less wealthy from beggaring themselves giving gifts they could ill afford.
The Origins of Saturnus’s Winter Feast.
The origins of Saturnalia are obscure. However, what can be said is the festival encompassed a need to celebrate the bounty of the harvest and the good things in life while propitiating the dark and threatening forces of winter.
According to legend, the Saturnalia predated the foundation of Rome. The god Janus instigated the festival in gratitude for Saturnus’s legendary introduction of agriculture to Italy. Many features of the festival agree with this supposed origin. The name ‘Saturn’ is believed to derive from the Latin for sowing, satus. The timing of the festival also corresponds with the gathering of the final harvests. Indeed, the Saturnalia was just one of several harvest festivals celebrated in December, including the Consualia on the 15th and the Opaliaon the 19th.
The ancient sources also associate Saturnalia with a mythical golden age when food was available without the associated toil. During the Saturnalia, according to Lucian, ‘men may remember what life was like in my days, when all things grew without sowing or plowing of theirs–no ears of corn, but loaves complete and meat ready cooked–, when wine flowed in rivers, and there were fountains of milk and honey; all men were good, and all men were gold. Such is the purpose of this my brief reign; therefore the merry noise on every side, the song, and the games; therefore the slave and the free as one.’
Elements of the festival support its primitive Italic origins. The pottery figures of the sigillares, the fair traditionally held on the last day of the Saturnalia are transmuted sacrifices to Saturnus; pottery representations of the human heads once placed on the god’s altar. Likewise, the candles represent torches to light against the darkness of Saturnus’s chaos. Darkness represents the time before civilization, the time of chaos. Chaos fits with the notion of misrule and disruption that epitomized Saturnalia. The dark also embodied winter.
The development of the Saturnalia, however, was closely influenced by Greek ideas. The format of the festival, with its feasts and social inversion, bore a direct resemblance to those of the Cronia, a Greek harvest festival held in honor of the god Cronos, Saturn’s Greek counterpart.
Saturnalia: A Popular Roman Festival
Whatever its origins, the Saturnalia was a popular Roman festival. According to Macrobius, it initially only lasted three days, beginning on 17th December and ending on the 19th, the date of the Opalia. However, so popular were Saturnus’s festivities that the festival soon expanded to last a week. In the process, it absorbed festivals such as the Opalia and the Sigillaria. This last festival, which the Romans celebrated on 23rd December, now became the last day of Saturnalia.
According to Cassius Dio, Augustus attempted to curb the Saturnalia festivities by cutting the festival back to its proper length. However, this three-day limit did not last long. For Emperor Claudius once again extended the Saturnalia to five days. Even if he had not, people had paid no attention to Augustus’s dictates and had continued their Saturnalia festivities for a whole week.
Saturnalia and Christmas
This popularity of Saturnalia explains why many people continued to celebrate it into the Christian era. The Chronicle of 354AD, a commentary on life in Rome at that time, continued to use a figure celebrating Saturnalia as the emblem for December- despite the rise of Christianity.
However, even when people ceased to celebrate Saturnalia explicitly, traces of its festivities remained. At the Feast of Fools, held on the 1st of January in medieval France it was common for high officials to exchange places with their subordinates during the festivities. And today, we find the traditions of gift giving; candle lighting, and merry-making still survive in the celebrations of Christmas.
Sources
Cassius Dio. Roman History, 60.25.
Encyclopedia Britannica.Saturnalia, (2007).
Epictetus. Discords 1.25.8.
Lucian. Saturnalia.
The University of Chicago. Macrobius, Saturnalia.
Price, S, and Kearns, E. The Oxford Dictionary of Classical Myth and Religion– ed. (2003). Oxford University Press.
