Saturnalia - Dec. 17

The observance of Saturnalia begins on December 17, although we don't know precisely which year the first Saturnalia was observed. There's more detail in the December 23, 2009 episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to This Day in History Class from how Stuff
Works dot Com and from the desk of Stuff You
Missed in History Class. It's the show where we explore
the past one day at a time with a quick
look at what happened today in history. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and I'd like
to thank Christopher Haciotis for filling in for me for

(00:22):
the previous seven episodes. Today is December seventeen, and the
summer seventeenth marks the beginning of saturn Alia. Although we
don't know exactly what year the ancient Romans observed Saturnalia
for the first time, this was though a very popular
Roman holiday honoring the god's Saturn. It was probably the
most popular of all the Roman festivals, and one of

(00:45):
the things that Saturn was associated with was agriculture, both
sewing and harvesting, and this festival happened at the end
of the autumn harvest in the beginning of the winter
planting cycle. Originally, this was just a single day observance
on the seventeen and by the reign of Emperor Augustus,
which lasted from twenty seven b C until he died

(01:08):
in fourteen CE, it had become a two day event.
People had been celebrating it at that point for at
least two hundred years. Over time, Saturnalia got longer and
longer and more elaborate. It started overlapping the winter solstice.
It was lasting for seven entire days, although some emperors
tried to rein it in a little bit cut it

(01:29):
down to maybe a more manageable five days instead of seven.
This was not just a time for drinking and feasting.
People shut down their businesses, including for this entire seven
day stretch, took a break from all their work. Various
codes of proper behavior became more and more relaxed. For example,
people were allowed to gamble, which wasn't acceptable, and a

(01:51):
lot of other circumstances. Enslaved people were temporarily given more freedoms,
and some folks have made connections to today's observance is
of Marti Gras in terms of what the atmosphere was like.
There was a lot of partying and revelry at the
end of this festival. There was also a presentation of gifts,

(02:11):
usually of candles and of wax figures and wax models
of fruit. People also decorated their homes with greenery. The
statue of Saturn and his temple in Rome was typically
bound with woolen rope, but during Saturdayalia those bombs would
be cut during the festival. Saturdayalia continue to be observed

(02:32):
after the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, which happened in
the year three twelve. That made the Roman Empire at
least officially a Christian empire, but pagan religions did continue
to be observed and pagan observances continued to happen, so
for a time, Christian holidays and Pagan holidays and festivals

(02:53):
were really being observed at the same time. So a
lot of people point to Saturnalia as the origin point
for were Christmas in the Western Church, and including both
the dates that it celebrated and some of the traditions
involved in celebrating it. And this, I mean it makes
a lot of logical sense. Saturnalia and Christmas were both
being observed and the Roman Empire because of the shifting

(03:16):
of Saturnalia and the lengthening of it that put it
right up against December twenty. But there were also other
pagan celebrations happening on the December as well, some of
them with closer parallels to Christianity than Saturnalia had. The
Roman civic holiday of Soul in Victa was also observed
on December twenty, and the cult of Mithress celebrated the

(03:39):
birth of their God on decembery and the story of
the birth of Mithress has a lot of parallels to
the story of the birth of Jesus Christ. So while
Saturnalia may have had some influence on the timing of
Christmas or some Christmas traditions, especially in the Western Church,
it's also really likely that other celebrations happening in the

(04:00):
early centuries of the religion played their own part as well.
You can learn a little bit more about Saturnalia in
the December two thousand nine episode of Stuffy Miss in
History Class. Thanks very much to Casey Pigraham and Chandler
Mayze for their audio work on this show. You can
subscribe to the Stand History Class on Apple Podcasts, Google podcast,
the I Heart Radio app, and where real to get

(04:22):
your podcasts. You can tune in tomorrow for a discovery
if you could call it that.