Celebrating Saturnalia

This first appeared in Fortean Times, FT ; , December 2021. A similiar article first appeared in History Today.

A public holiday celebrated around 25th December in the family home - a time for the exchange of gifts, feasting and decorating trees. Christmas? No, this was Saturnalia, the pagan Roman winter solstice festival. But did the Christian festival of Christmas really have its origins in pagan Saturnalia?

The 2013 Saturnalia parade in Chester, England, Photo: Donald Judge, Creative Commons Licence

Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus described Saturnalia as "the best of times": small gifts were exchanged, dress codes were relaxed, social roles were inverted. Masters and slaves were expected to swap clothes, the wealthy to pay the month’s rent for those who couldn't afford it. Households rolled dice to choose a temporary Saturnalian monarch, who wore a pilleus – a pointy hat. in Lucian of Samosata's first century AD poem Saturnalia, the god Cronos (Saturn) says: "During my week the serious is barred: no business allowed. Drinking and being drunk, noise and games of dice, appointing of kings and feasting of slaves, singing naked, clapping... an occasional ducking of corked faces in icy water..."

Saturnalia was very ancient, beginning as a farmer's festival to mark the end of the autumn planting season in honour of Saturn (satus means sowing). Holly was one of several evergreen plants associated with Saturn. The foundation stone of the first temple of Saturn at the edge of Rome's forum was laid when Rome was still a kingdom, around 495 BC, and completed as Rome became a Republic. Numerous archaeological sites from the coastal province of Constantine, now in Algeria, demonstrate that the cult of Saturn survived there until the third century AD.

View of the Temple of Concord and the Temple of Saturn, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Rome, 1760-1778

Saturnalia grew in duration and moved to progressively later dates during the Roman period. In the reign of the Emperor Augustus (63 BC-AD 14), it was a two-day affair starting on 17th December, heralded by sacrifices at the Temple of Saturn and shouts of "Io Saturnalia!" By the time Lucian described the festivities it had become a seven-day event.

From as early as 217 BC, and probably much earlier, there were public Saturnalia banquets. Rome cancelled executions and refrained from declaring war during the festival. Pagan Roman authorities tried to curtail Saturnalia; Emperor Caligula (AD 12-41) tried - with little success - to restrict it to five days.

The popularity of Saturnalia is shown by an incident in AD 43 during the disembarkation of legions of the Emperor Claudius to invade of Britain. Mutiny was brewing on the Gaulish coast - legionnaires refused to leave the known world for uncharted territory. Up stepped Tiberius Claudius Narcissus, freedman (former slave) of the Emperor and the most influential figure in his court, urging the legions to board the ships. Seeing a freedman taking charge reminded them of a fun festival, they broke into a chant of "Io Saturnalia!" This lightened the mood and the legionaries agreed to set sail.

It may have been the Emperor Domitian (AD 51-96) who moved Saturnalia to 25th December, in an attempt to assert his authority. He curbed Saturnalia's subversive tendencies by marking it with lavish events under his control. The poet Statius (AD 45-95), in his Silvae describes the entertainments Domitian presided over. Games opened with fruit, nuts and sweets showered on the crowd and featured flights of flamingos released over Rome. These were Rome's first ever illuminated night-time shows, with female gladiators and fighting dwarves.

The Emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in AD 312 started imperial patronage of Christian churches, but Christianity didn’t become the Roman Empire’s official religion overnight. Dr David Gwynn, reader in ancient history at Royal Holloway, University of London, told me "Saturnalia continued to be celebrated in the century afterward". The poet Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius wrote another Saturnalia, describing a banquet of pagan literary celebrities in Rome. Dated to between AD 383 and 430, it describes a Saturnalia alive and well under Christian emperors. The calendar of Polemius Silvus from around AD 449 mentions Saturnalia "used to honour the god Saturn," so by then it had become just another popular carnival.

There's a rival contender for Saturnalia as the inspiration for Christmas, though - the festival of dies natalis solis invicti, "birthday of the unconquered sun", a Roman public holiday on 25th December. Originating in the monotheistic cult of Mithras, sol invicta was introduced in AD 274 by Emperor Aurelian, who effectively made it a state religion. Sol invicta flourished because it was able to assimilate aspects of Jupiter and other deities into its figure of the Sun King. But in spite of efforts by later pagan emperors to control Saturnalia and absorb the winter festival into an official cult, the sol invicta civil holiday ended up closely resembling the ancient Saturnalia.

Constantine was brought up in the sol invicta cult, in what was already a predominantly monotheistic empire: "It is therefore possible," says Dr Gwynn, "that Christmas was intended to replace this festival (sol invicta) rather than Saturnalia."

© Matt Salusbury 2009, 2021