| Arechi |
01-01-2010 09:55 PM |
There's a bit more information that I've collected from other websites that go into a little bit more detail of what occurred.
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Beginning in the week leading up to the winter solstice and continuing for a full month, Saturnalia was a hedonistic time, when food and drink were plentiful and the normal Roman social order was turned upside down. For a month, slaves would become masters. Peasants were in command of the city. Business and schools were closed so that everyone could join in the fun. Also around the time of the winter solstice, Romans observed Juvenalia, a feast honoring the children of Rome. In addition, members of the upper classes often celebrated the birthday of Mithra, the god of the unconquerable sun, on December 25. It was believed that Mithra, an infant god, was born of a rock. For some Romans, Mithra's birthday was the most sacred day of the year.
In the early years of Christianity, Easter was the main holiday; the birth of Jesus was not celebrated. In the fourth century, church officials decided to institute the birth of Jesus as a holiday. Unfortunately, the Bible does not mention date for his birth (a fact Puritans later pointed out in order to deny the legitimacy of the celebration). Although some evidence suggests that his birth may have occurred in the spring (why would shepherds be herding in the middle of winter?), Pope Julius I chose December 25. It is commonly believed that the church chose this date in an effort to adopt and absorb the traditions of the pagan Saturnalia festival.
~Courtesy of Saturnalia - History.com - God of Agriculture & Winter Solstice Festivals
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By the beginning of December, writes Columella, the farmer should have finished his autumn planting. Now, at the time of the winter solstice (December 25 in the Julian calendar), Saturnus, the god of seed and sowing, was honored with a festival. The Saturnalia officially was celebrated on December 17 (XVI Kal. Jan.) and, in Cicero's time, lasted seven days, from December 17-23. Augustus limited the holiday to three days, so the civil courts would not have to be closed any longer than necessary, and Caligula extended it to five (Suetonius, XVII; Cassius Dio, LIX.6), which Claudius restored after it had been abolished (Dio, LX.25). Still, everyone seems to have continued to celebrate for a full week, extended, says Macrobius (I.10.24), by celebration of the Sigillaria, so named for the small earthenware figurines that were sold.
Macrobius, in his Saturnalia, creates an imaginary symposium among pagan intellectuals that takes place then. There, he offers an explanation for the varying length of the holiday. Originally, it was celebrated on only one day, the fourteenth before the Kalends of January (December 19). With the Julian reform of the calendar, however, two days were added to December, and the Saturnalia was celebrated sixteen days before the Kalends (December 17), "with the result that, since the exact day was not commonly known--some observing the addition which Caesar had made to the calendar and others following the old usage--the festival came to be regarded as lasting for more days than one" (I.10.2). The original day now was given over to the Opalia, honoring Ops, who personified abundance and the fruits of the earth, and was the consort of Saturn. As the two deities represented the produce of the fields and orchards, so they also were thought to represent heaven and earth. It was for this reason, says Macrobius (I.10.20), that the two festivals were celebrated at the same time, the worshipers of Ops always sitting in prayer so that they touched the earth, mother of all.
In the Roman calendar, the Saturnalia was designated a holy day, or holiday, on which religious rites were performed. Saturn, himself, was identified with Kronos, and sacrificed to according to Greek ritual, with the head uncovered. The Temple of Saturn, the oldest temple recorded by the pontiffs, had been dedicated on the Saturnalia, and the woolen bonds which fettered the feet of the ivory cult statue within were loosened on that day to symbolize the liberation of the god.
It also was a festival day. After sacrifice at the temple, there was a public banquet, which Livy says was introduced in 217 BC (there also may have been a lectisternium, a banquet for the god in which its image is placed in attendance, as if a guest). Afterwards, according to Macrobius (I.10.18), the celebrants shouted "Io, Saturnalia!" at a riotous feast in the temple.
The Saturnalia was the most popular holiday of the Roman year. Catullus (XIV) describes it as "the best of days," and Seneca complains that the "whole mob has let itself go in pleasures" (Epistles, XVIII.3). Pliny the Younger writes that he retired to his room while the rest of the household celebrated (Epistles, II.17.24). It was an occasion for celebration, visits to friends, and the presentation of gifts, particularly wax candles (cerei), perhaps to signify the returning light after the solstice, and sigillaria. Martial wrote Xenia and Apophoreta for the Saturnalia. Both were published in December and intended to accompany the "guest gifts" which were given at that time of year. Aulus Gellius relates in his Attic Nights (XVIII.2) that he and his Roman compatriots would gather at the baths in Athens, where they were studying, and pose difficult questions to one another on the ancient poets, a crown of laurel being dedicated to Saturn if no-one could answer them.
During the holiday, restrictions were relaxed and the social order inverted. Gambling was allowed in public. Slaves were permitted to use dice and did not have to work. Instead of the toga, less formal dinner clothes (synthesis) were permitted, as was the pileus, a felt cap normally worn by the manumitted slave that symbolized the freedom of the season. Within the family, a Lord of Misrule was chosen. Slaves were treated as equals, allowed to wear their masters' clothing, and be waited on at meal time in remembrance of an earlier golden age thought to have been ushered in by the god. In the Saturnalia, Lucian relates that "During My week the serious is barred; no business allowed. Drinking, noise and games and dice, appointing of kings and feasting of slaves, singing naked, clapping of frenzied hands, an occasional ducking of corked faces in icy water—such are the functions over which I preside."
This equality was temporary, of course; and Petronius speaks of an impudent slave being asked at some other time of the year whether it was December yet. Dio writes of Aulus Plautius, who was to lead the conquest of Britain, cajoling his troops. But they hesitated, "indignant at the thought of carrying on a campaign outside the limits of the known world." Only when they were entreated by a former slave dispatched by Claudius did they relent, shouting "Io, Saturnalia" (LX.19.3).
(If a time of merriment, the season also was an occasion for murder. The Catiline conspirators intended to fire the city and kill the senate on the Saturnalia, when many would be preoccupied with the festivities. Caracalla plotted to murder his brother then, and Commodus was strangled in his bath on New Year's eve.)
At the end of the first century AD, Statius still could proclaim: "For how many years shall this festival abide! Never shall age destroy so holy a day! While the hills of Latium remain and father Tiber, while thy Rome stands and the Capitol thou hast restored to the world, it shall continue" (Silvae, I.6.98ff). And the Saturnalia did continue to be celebrated as Brumalia (from bruma, winter solstice) down to the Christian era, when, by the middle of the fourth century AD, its rituals had become absorbed in the celebration of Christmas.
~Courtesy of Saturnalia
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The opening festivities were marked by a public banquet at the temple of Saturn when the god’s statue was released from the ties which bound it to the temple for the rest of the year. From this point on, normal social rules were inverted. All business was suspended, criminals could not be convicted or wars started. Pleasure ruled. Each household would choose a King of the festival to preside over their own parties and celebrations, thrown for families and for clients by their patron. Slaves would be served by their own masters who would dress informally, even wearing the traditional slaves hat, the pilleus. The time was spent playing games, gambling, eating and drinking.
Gifts were also given. Traditionally, they were comprised of pottery figures called sigilla and 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 was required to prevent the less wealthy from beggaring themselves giving gifts they could ill afford.
The Origins of Saturnalia
Saturnalia was an Italic-Hellenic hybrid, celebrating the bounty of the harvest and the good things in life, whilst propitiating the dark and threatening forces of winter.
According to legend, the Saturnalia was ancient and predated the foundation of Rome. It was instigated by Janus in gratitude for Saturn’s legendary introduction of agriculture to Italy. Many features of the festival do agree this origin. The name Saturn is believed to derive from the Latin for sowing, satus. Furthermore, the saturnalia was only one festival in December celebrating the harvest safely gathered in against the coming of winter. The Consualia was celebrated on the 15th and the Opalia on the 19th.
However, the ancient sources also reveal legends that link Saturn not with agricultures introduction but the days before it; a mythical golden age when food was available without the associated toil and mankind was carefree, that finds its echo in the festival’s emphasis on leisure and pleasure.
Elements of the festival support primitive Italic origins. The pottery figures of the sigillares are transmuted sacrifices to Saturn, pottery representations of the human heads once placed on the god’s altar. Likewise, the candles represent torches to light against the darkness of Saturn’s chaos. Darkness represents the time before civilisation, the time of chaos which fits with the idea of misrule. But it also epitomises winter.
However, the development of Saturnalia was closely influenced by Greek ideas. The format of the festival, with its feasts and social inversion, bear a direct resemblance to those of the Cronia, a Greek harvest festival held in honour of the god Cronos, Saturn’s Greek counterpart.
Survival of Saturnalia
Saturnalia continued to be celebrated into the Christian era. The Chronicle of 354AD, a commentary on life in Rome at that time used a figure celebrating Saturnalia as the emblem for December.
Yet even when it had ceased to be explicitly celebrated, traces of saturnalia’s festivities still remained. At the Feast of Fools, held on the 1st January in medieval France it was common for high and low officials to exchanging places during festivities. And today, we find the traditions of gift giving, candle lighting and merry making still survive in the celebrations of Christmas.
~Courtesy of The Roman Festival of Saturnalia: Discover the Origins and Customs of a Roman Midwinter Festival
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