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Saturnalia is an Roman festivals and holiday in honour of the god Saturn, held on 17 December in the Julian calendar and later expanded with festivities until 19 December. By the 1st century BC, the celebration had been extended until 23 December, for a total of seven days of festivities. The holiday was celebrated with a sacrifice at the Temple of Saturn, in the Roman Forum, and a public banquet, followed by private gift-giving, continual partying, and a carnival atmosphere that overturned Roman social norms: gambling was permitted, and masters provided table service for their slaves as it was seen as a time of liberty for both slaves and freedmen alike.Miller, John F. "Roman Festivals," in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome (Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 172. A common custom was the election of a "King of the Saturnalia", who gave orders to people, which were followed and presided over the merrymaking. The gifts exchanged were usually gag gifts or small figurines made of wax or pottery known as sigillaria. The poet Catullus called it "the best of days".Catullus 14.15 (optimo dierum), as cited by
Saturnalia was the Roman equivalent to the earlier Greek holiday of Kronia, which was celebrated during the Attic calendar of Hekatombaion in late midsummer. It held theological importance for some Romans, who saw it as a restoration of the ancient Golden Age, when the world was ruled by Saturn. The Neoplatonism philosopher Porphyry interpreted the freedom associated with Saturnalia as symbolizing the "freeing of souls into immortality". Saturnalia may have influenced some of the customs associated with later celebrations in western Europe occurring in midwinter, particularly traditions associated with Christmas, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, and Epiphany. In particular, the historical western European Christmas custom of electing a "Lord of Misrule" may have its roots in Saturnalia celebrations.
The Greek writer Athenaeus cites numerous other examples of similar festivals celebrated throughout the Greco-Roman world, including the Crete festival of Hermaia in honor of Hermes, an unnamed festival from Troezen in honor of Poseidon, the Thessaly festival of Peloria in honor of Zeus Pelorios, and an unnamed festival from Babylon. He also mentions that the custom of masters dining with their slaves was associated with the Athenian festival of Anthesteria and the Spartan festival of Hyacinthia. The Argive festival of Hybristica, though not directly related to the Saturnalia, involved a similar reversal of roles in which women would dress as men and men would dress as women.
The ancient Roman historian Justinus credits Saturn with being a historical king of the pre-Roman inhabitants of Italy:
Although probably the best-known Roman holiday, Saturnalia as a whole is not described from beginning to end in any single ancient source. Modern understanding of the festival is pieced together from several accounts dealing with various aspects. The Saturnalia was the dramatic setting of the multivolume work of that name by Macrobius, a Latin writer from late antiquity who is the major source for information about the holiday. Macrobius describes the reign of Justinus's "king Saturn" as "a time of great happiness, both on account of the universal plenty that prevailed and because as yet there was no division into bond and free – as one may gather from the complete license enjoyed by slaves at the Saturnalia." In Lucian's Saturnalia it is Chronos himself who proclaims a "festive season, when 'tis lawful to be drunken, and slaves have license to revile their lords".
In one of the interpretations in Macrobius's work, Saturnalia is a festival of light leading to the winter solstice, with the abundant presence of candles symbolizing the quest for knowledge and truth.Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.1.8–9; Jane Chance, Medieval Mythography: From Roman North Africa to the School of Chartres, A.D. 433–1177 (University Press of Florida, 1994), p. 71. The renewal of light and the coming of the new year was celebrated in the later Roman Empire at the Sol Invictus, the "Birthday of the Unconquerable Sun", on 25 December.Robert A. Kaster, Macrobius: Saturnalia, Books 1–2 (Loeb Classical Library, 2011), note on p. 16.
The popularity of Saturnalia continued into the 3rd and 4th centuries CE, and as the Roman Empire came under Christian rule, many of its customs were recast into or at least influenced the seasonal celebrations surrounding Christmas and the New Year.Williams, Craig A., Martial: Epigrams Book Two (Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 259 (on the custom of gift-giving). Many observers schooled in the classical tradition have noted similarities between the Saturnalia and historical revelry during the Twelve Days of Christmas and the Feast of Fools"The reciprocal influences of the Saturnalia, Yule, Christmas, and Chanukkah are familiar," notes C. Bennet Pascal, "October Horse", Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 85 (1981), p. 289.
It was not unusual for the Romans to offer cult (cultus) to the deities of other nations in the hope of redirecting their favour (see evocatio), and the Second Punic War in particular created pressures on Roman society that led to a number of religious innovations and reforms. See also the importation of Cybele to Rome during this time. Robert E.A. Palmer has argued that the introduction of new rites at this time was in part an effort to appease Baal Hammon, the Punic religion who was regarded as the counterpart of the Roman Saturn and Greek Cronus. For other scholars who have held this view, including those who precede Palmer, see , especially note 32. The table service that masters offered their slaves thus would have extended to Carthaginian or African war captives.
Following the sacrifice the Roman Senate arranged a lectisternium, a ritual of Greek origin that typically involved placing a deity's image on a sumptuous couch, as if he were present and actively participating in the festivities. A public banquet followed (Symposium publicum).Livy 22.1;
The day was supposed to be a holiday from all forms of work. Schools were closed, and exercise regimens were suspended. Courts were not in session, so no justice was administered, and no declaration of war could be made., citing Pliny the Younger, Letters 8.7.1, Martial 5.84 and 12.81; Lucian, Cronosolon 13; Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.10.1, 4, 23. After the public rituals, observances continued domus. On 18 and 19 December, which were also holidays from public business, families conducted domestic rituals. They bathed early, and those with means sacrificed a suckling pig, a traditional offering to an chthonic.Horace, Odes 3.17, Martial 14.70; Fowler, Roman Festivals, p. 272.
The practice of gladiator munera was criticized by Christian apologists as a form of human sacrifice. Although there is no evidence of this practice during the Republic, the offering of gladiators led to later theories that the primeval Saturn had demanded human victims. Macrobius says that Dīs Pater was placated with human heads and Saturn with sacrificial victims consisting of men ( virorum victimis).Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.7.31 In mythic lore, during the visit of Hercules to Italy, the civilizing demigod insisted that the practice be halted and the ritual reinterpreted. Instead of heads to Dīs Pater, the Romans were to offer effigies or masks (oscilla); a mask appears in the representation of Saturnalia in the Calendar of Filocalus. Since the Greek word phota meant both 'man' and 'lights', candles were a substitute offering to Saturn for the light of life. The figurines that were exchanged as gifts ( sigillaria) may also have represented token substitutes.Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.10.24; Carlin A. Barton, The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster (Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 166. For another Roman ritual that may represent human sacrifice, see Argei. Oscilla were also part of the Feriae Latinae and the Compitalia: Fowler, Roman Festivals, p. 272.
Saturnalian license also permitted slaves to disrespect their masters without the threat of a punishment. It was a time for free speech: the Augustan poet Horace calls it "December liberty".Horace, Satires 2.7.4, libertas Decembri; In two satires set during the Saturnalia, Horace has a slave offer sharp criticism to his master.Horace, Satires, Book 2, poems 3 and 7; Catherine Keane, Figuring Genre in Roman Satire (Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 90; Maria Plaza, The Function of Humour in Roman Verse Satire: Laughing and Lying (Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 298–300 et passim. Everyone knew, however, that the leveling of the social hierarchy was temporary and had limits; no social norms were ultimately threatened, because the holiday would end.Barton, The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans, passim.
The toga, the characteristic garment of the male Roman citizen, was set aside in favor of the Greek synthesis, colourful "dinner clothes" otherwise considered in poor taste for daytime wear. (especially note 59). Romans of citizen status normally went about bare-headed, but for the Saturnalia donned the pilleus, the conical felt cap that was the usual mark of a freedman. Slaves, who ordinarily were not entitled to wear the pilleus, wore it as well, so that everyone was "pilleated" without distinction.
The participation of freeborn Roman women is implied by sources that name gifts for women, but their presence at banquets may have depended on the custom of their time; from the late Republic onward, women mingled socially with men more freely than they had in earlier times. Female entertainers were certainly present at some otherwise all-male gatherings. Role-playing was implicit in the Saturnalia's status reversals, and there are hints of mask-wearing or "guising".At the beginning of Horace's Satire 2.3, and the mask in the Saturnalia imagery of the Calendar of Philocalus, and Martial's inclusion of masks as Saturnalia gifts No theatrical events are mentioned in connection with the festivities, but the classicist Erich Segal saw Roman comedy, with its cast of impudent, free-wheeling slaves and libertine seniors, as imbued with the Saturnalian spirit.Erich Segal, Roman Laughter: The Comedy of Plautus (Oxford University Press, 1968, 2nd ed. 1987), pp. 8–9, 32–33, 103 et passim.
Seneca looked forward to the holiday, if somewhat tentatively, in a letter to a friend:
"It is now the month of December, when the greatest part of the city is in a bustle. Loose reins are given to public dissipation; everywhere you may hear the sound of great preparations, as if there were some real difference between the days devoted to Saturn and those for transacting business. ... Were you here, I would willingly confer with you as to the plan of our conduct; whether we should eve in our usual way, or, to avoid singularity, both take a better supper and throw off the toga."Seneca the Younger, Epistulae 18.1–2.
Some Romans found it all a bit much. Pliny describes a secluded suite of rooms in his Laurentum Roman villa, which he used as a retreat: "... especially during the Saturnalia when the rest of the house is noisy with the licence of the holiday and festive cries. This way I don't hamper the games of my people and they don't hinder my work or studies."Pliny the Younger, Letters 2.17.24. Horace similarly sets Satire 2.3 during the Saturnalia but in the countryside, where he has fled the frenzied pace.
In a practice that might be compared to modern , verses sometimes accompanied the gifts. Martial has a collection of poems written as if to be attached to gifts.Martial, Book 14 (Apophoreta); Williams, Martial: Epigrams, p. 259; Nauta, Poetry for Patrons, p. 79 et passim. Catullus received a book of bad poems by "the worst poet of all time" as a joke from a friend.Catullus, Carmen 14; Robinson Ellis, A Commentary on Catullus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1876), pp. 38–39.
Gift-giving was not confined to the day of the Sigillaria. In some households, guests and family members received gifts after the feast in which slaves had shared.
Since this figure does not appear in accounts from the Roman Republic, the princeps of the Saturnalia may have developed as a satiric response to the new era of rule by a princeps, the title assumed by the first emperor Augustus to avoid the hated connotations of the word "king" (rex). Art and literature under Augustus celebrated his reign as a new Golden Age, but the Saturnalia makes a mockery of a world in which law is determined by one man and the traditional social and political networks are reduced to the power of the emperor over his subjects. In a poem about a lavish Saturnalia under Domitian, Statius makes it clear that the emperor, like Jupiter, still reigns during the temporary return of Saturn.Statius, Silvae 1.6; Nauta, Poetry for Patrons, p. 400.
By the late Roman Republic, the private festivities of Saturnalia had expanded to seven days,Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.10.3, citing the Atellan Farce composers Quintus Novius and Mummius but during the Imperial period contracted variously to three to five days.Miller, "Roman Festivals," in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, p. 172. Caligula extended official observances to five.Suetonius, Life of Caligula 17; Cassius Dio 59.6.4; ; Fowler, Roman Festivals, p. 268, citing Theodor Mommsen and CIL I.337.
The date 17 December was the first day of the astrological sign Capricorn, the house of Saturn named for the god.Fowler, Roman Festivals, p. 268, note 3; Roger Beck, "Ritual, Myth, Doctrine, and Initiation in the Mysteries of Mithras: New Evidence from a Cult Vessel," Journal of Roman Studies 90 (2000), p. 179. Its proximity to the winter solstice (21 to 23 December on the Julian calendar) was endowed with various meanings by both ancient and modern scholars: for instance, the widespread use of wax candles (cerei, singular cereus) could refer to "the returning power of the sun's light after the solstice".Fowler, Roman Festivals, p. 272. Fowler thought the use of candles influenced the Christmas rituals of the Latin Church, and compared the symbolism of the candles to the Yule log.
As a deity of agricultural bounty, Saturn embodied prosperity and wealth in general. The name of his consort Ops meant "wealth, resources". Her festival, Opalia, was celebrated on 19 December. The Temple of Saturn housed the state treasury ( aerarium) and was the administrative headquarters of the , the public officials whose duties included oversight of the mint. It was among the oldest cult sites in Rome, and had been the location of "a very ancient" altar (ara) even before the building of the first temple in 497 BC.Fowler, Roman Festivals, p. 271.
The Romans regarded Saturn as the original and autochthonous ruler of the Capitolium,The Capitolium had thus been called the Mons Saturnius in older times. and the first king of Latium or even the whole of Italy. At the same time, there was a tradition that Saturn had been an immigrant deity, received by Janus after he was usurped by his son Jupiter (Zeus) and expelled from Greece. The Roman theologian Varro listed Saturn among the Sabine gods. His contradictions—a foreigner with one of Rome's oldest sanctuaries, and a god of liberation who is kept in fetters most of the year—indicate Saturn's capacity for obliterating social distinctions.
Roman mythology of the Golden Age of Saturn's reign differed from the Greek tradition. He arrived in Italy "dethroned and fugitive",Versnel, "Saturnus and the Saturnalia," p. 143. but brought agriculture and civilization and became a king. As the Augustan poet Virgil described it:
"He gathered together the unruly race of scattered over mountain heights, and gave them laws .... Under his reign were the golden ages men tell of: in such perfect peace he ruled the nations."Virgil, Aeneid 8. 320–325, as cited by
The third century Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyry took an allegorical view of the Saturnalia. He saw the festival's theme of liberation and dissolution as representing the "freeing of souls into immortality"—an interpretation that Mithraists may also have followed, since they included many slaves and freedmen.Porphyry, De antro 23, following Numenius, as cited by Roger Beck, " Qui Mortalitatis Causa Convenerunt: The Meeting of the Virunum Mithraists on June 26, A.D. 184," Phoenix 52 (1998), p. 340. One of the speakers in Macrobius's Saturnalia is Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, a Mithraist. According to Porphyry, the Saturnalia occurred near the winter solstice because the sun enters Capricorn, the astrological house of Saturn, at that time.Beck, Roger, "Ritual, Myth, Doctrine, and Initiation in the Mysteries of Mithras: New Evidence from a Cult Vessel," Journal of Roman Studies 90 (2000), p. 179. In the Saturnalia of Macrobius, the proximity of the Saturnalia to the winter solstice leads to an exposition of solar monotheism, the belief that the Sun (see Sol Invictus) ultimately encompasses all divinities as one.van den Broek, Roel, "The Sarapis Oracle in Macrobius Sat., I, 20, 16–17," in Hommages à Maarten J. Vermaseren (Brill, 1978), vol. 1, p. 123ff.
In the Jerusalem Talmud, Avodah Zarah claims the etymology of Saturnalia is שנאה טמונה śinʾâ ṭǝmûnâ "hidden hatred," and refers to the hatred Esau, whom the Rabbis believed had fathered Rome, harbored for Jacob.
The Babylonian Talmud's Avodah Zarah ascribes the origins of Saturnalia (and Kalends) to Adam, who saw that the days were getting shorter and thought it was punishment for his sin: In the Babylonian Avodah Zarah, this etiology is attributed to the tannaim, but the story is suspiciously similar to the etiology of Kalends attributed by the Jerusalem Avodah Zarah to Abba Arikha.
The date of Jesus's birth is unknown. A spurious correspondence between Cyril of Jerusalem and Pope Julius I (337–352), quoted by John of Nikiu in the 9th century, is sometimes given as a source for a claim that, in the fourth century AD, Pope Julius I decreed that the birth of Jesus be celebrated on 25 December.Letter of Cyril of Jerusalem to Julius I, cited as false. Some speculate that the date was chosen to create a Christian replacement or alternative to Saturnalia and the birthday festival of Sol Invictus, held on 25 December. Around AD 200, Tertullian had berated Christians for continuing to celebrate the pagan Saturnalia festival. The Church may have hoped to attract more converts to Christianity by allowing them to continue to celebrate on the same day. The Church may have also been influenced by the idea that Jesus was conceived and died on the same date; Jesus died during Passover and, in the third century AD, Passover was celebrated on 25 March. The Church may have calculated Jesus's birthday as nine months later, on 25 December. But in fact the correspondence is spurious.
As a result of the close proximity of dates, many Christians in western Europe continued to celebrate traditional Saturnalia customs in association with Christmas and the surrounding holidays. Like Saturnalia, Christmas during the Middle Ages was a time of ruckus, drinking, gambling, and overeating. The tradition of the Saturnalicius princeps was particularly influential. In medieval France and Switzerland, a boy would be elected "Boy bishop" on 28 December (the Feast of the Holy Innocents) and would issue decrees much like the Saturnalicius princeps. The boy bishop's tenure ended during the evening vespers. This custom was common across western Europe, but varied considerably by region; in some places, the boy bishop's orders could become quite rowdy and unrestrained, but, in others, his power was only ceremonial. In some parts of France, during the boy bishop's tenure, the actual clergy would wear masks or dress in women's clothing, a reversal of roles in line with the traditional character of Saturnalia.
During the late medieval period and early Renaissance, many towns in England elected a "Lord of Misrule" at Christmas time to preside over the Feast of Fools. This custom was sometimes associated with the Twelfth Night or Epiphany. A common tradition in western Europe was to drop a Bean-feast; whoever found the object would become the "King (or Queen) of the Bean". During the Reformation, reformers sought to revise or even completely abolish such practices, which they regarded as "Papist"; these efforts were largely successful. The Puritans banned the "Lord of Misrule" in England and the custom was largely forgotten shortly thereafter, though the bean in the pudding survived as a tradition of a small gift to the one finding a single almond hidden in the traditional Christmas porridge in Scandinavia.
Nonetheless, in the middle of the nineteenth century, some of the old ceremonies, such as gift-giving, were revived in English-speaking countries as part of a widespread "Christmas revival". During this revival, authors such as Charles Dickens sought to reform the "conscience of Christmas" and turn the formerly riotous holiday into a family-friendly occasion. Vestiges of the Saturnalia festivities may still be preserved in some of the traditions now associated with Christmas. The custom of gift-giving at Christmas time resembles the Roman tradition of giving sigillaria and the lighting of Advent candles resembles the Roman tradition of lighting torches and wax tapers. Likewise, Saturnalia and Christmas both share associations with eating, drinking, singing, and dancing.
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