The tenth month of the old calendar, December marked the end of the agricultural year and the beginning of winter for the Romans. So it was natural for them to want to celebrate the harvest, ward off the darkness of winter, and ensure the continued prosperity of the Roman people with a range of December festivals.

For this reason, December was a bumper month for Roman festivals. The celebrations of Saturnalia and Mithras are well known, but the Romans also celebrated a variety of other festivals during this month. These mid-winter festivals included the festivals of Bona Dea, the Consualia, the Opalia, the Angeronalia, and the Larentalia.

 

 

December 3: The Festival of Bona Dea

 

Bona Dea was the ‘good goddess’ of the Roman people, and they dedicated her festival to their welfare. As with so many Roman deities, the origins and exact identity of the goddess was obscure. ‘The Phrygians say that this goddess originated with them,’ states Plutarch in his Life of Caesar, but the Romans ‘say that she was a dryad nymph who married Faunus.’ The Greeks, on the other hand, referred to her as the ‘Unnamable One’and linked her to Dionysus.

All Roman society marked the festival of Bona Dea, but the central ritual of the celebration remained private and happened at night in the house of the chief magistrate. The rite was exclusively female, headed by the Vestal Virgins and the female relatives of the city magistrates. Utterly secretive, no Roman writer ever recorded its rituals in full. What little is known suggests agricultural emblems such as vine branches and a covered wine jar, representing milk and honey featured as decorations.

 

 

 December 15: The Consualia

The Consualia was celebrated twice during the Roman year: once in August to mark the beginnings of the harvest and once in December to mark the harvest’s end and winter’s onset. The festival took its name from the Roman god of the granary, Consus.  Consus was an ancient god. Ovid linked him to the very beginnings of Rome, describing how ‘Romulus prepares Consus’s Feast.’

The god took his name from the verb condere or ‘to store.’  This derivation was appropriate because Consus originated from the valley of the Circus Maximus, the site where the Romans stored their grain in underground bins. Consus maintained an underground altar just under the Circus Maximus, which priests only uncovered on his feast days. It was here that the Roman’s held the December Consualia.

At the Consualia, the statue of Consus was set up near his altar, surrounded by statues of other ancient agricultural deities such as Segesta and Tutilina. The Flamen Quirinalis and the Vestal Virgins would then approach the altar and make offerings of the first fruits of the harvest to the god. Once the formalities were over, Consus’s shrine sealed once more. Meanwhile, the people of Rome, confident that the god would protect the city’s grain, returned above ground to celebrate by enjoying the horse races held in the stadium above Consus’s shrine.

 December 19: The Opalia.

Hot on the heels of the Consualia was another harvest celebration, the Opalia which honored Ops, the goddess of abundance and the reserved harvest. Op’s festival occurred on the third day of the most famous Roman December festival, the Saturnalia. This overlap led to the Saturnalia overshadowing Op’s celebration- and for the goddess herself becoming styled as Saturn’s wife! For this reason, little is known about the particulars of the rites. However, Macrobius records that the worshippers of Ops paid their respects to the goddess by conducting their rituals while sitting on the earth with which Ops was associated.

 

21 December: The Angeronalia

 

On the shortest day of the year, the priest’s of the goddess Angerona’s gathered at her temple near the Porta Romanula, one of Rome’s inner gates near the Palatine Hill to celebrate the festival of the Angeronalia, which was also known as the Divalia.

Angerona was a mysterious deity. She was the goddess of the winter solstice and ‘the goddess of will.’ The meaning of Angerona’s name and the relevance of her festival are debatable. Some experts believe the goddess’s name derived from the Latin word for suffocation ‘angor’. This deduction is logical when considering Angerona’s statue, which was kept bound in her temple, her mouth sealed and one finger laid against her gagged lips.

There are other theories about the origins of Angerona’s name. Some believe it comes from the Latin word for “to raise up’, angerere. Alternatively, it could derive from Angustiae, the Latin for a short period. Angustiae, in the context of the Angeronalia, could refer to the solstice, when darkness held sway for a short period before the reemergence of the power of the sun on December 25th.  If this is the case, then the bound statue of the goddess takes on a different significance. For her restriction may not relate to the negative aspects of silence and death associated with winter but according to Dumezil, the stillness and silence that accompanies the focusing of will on the re-emerging sun.

 

December 23:  The Larentalia

 

“I must not ignore you, Larentia,” said Ovid, “Great nation’s nurse,”  Ovid spoke for all Romans, as December 23 was the day of the Larentalia, a festival dedicated to the goddess. The origins of the Larentalia and the goddess at the festival’s center were obscure- and rather morbid! For it seems the Larentalia related to the funeral rites of the goddess Acca Larentia.

Acca Larentia’s name suggests she may have been the mother of the Rome’s Lares. ‘Acca’ may derive from the Sanskrit word for mother and Laurentia from the name Lara or Larunda, the mother of the Lares. Larentia was also a name applied to the wife of the shepherd who found Romulus and Remus and subsequently acted as their wet-nurse. The name also belonged to a wealthy prostitute who left her wealth to the city of Rome on the condition that the city remembered her annually. However, both Larentia’s could have been the same person. For before they were adopted by the shepherd, Romulus and Remus were suckled by a she-wolf or lupa– which was also the Roman name for a prostitute.

The Larentalia was officiated by the Flamen Quirinus, who marked it as a Parentalia or festival for dead parents. In this way, the Larentalia was a way for Rome’s citizens to commemorate their divine ancestors.

 

Sources

Dumezil, G. Archaic Roman Religion, Volumes 1 and 2.(1996). John Hopkins University Press: Baltimore and London.

Ovid. Fasti. Trans. Boyle, AJ, and Woodward, R D. Penguin Books: London.

Price, S, and Kearns, E. The Oxford Dictionary of Classical Myth and Religion. (2003). Oxford University Press.

Plutarch, Life of Caesar, in Lefkowitz, M R, and Fant, M B. Women’s Life in Greece and Rome. (1995). Duckworth: London.