Saturnalia is an ancient Roman holiday in honor of the god Saturnus that began on December 17th. The Romans believed that, in very ancient times, before Iupiter became the king of the deities, the cosmos had been ruled by Iupiter’s father Saturnus. They believed that the reign of Saturnus had been a “Golden Age,” in which all human beings had lived together in harmony and simplicity, and that Saturnalia was a temporary restoration of Saturnus’s reign on earth that could only last until the end of the festival.
I’ve written about Saturnalia before—usually in the context of debunking popular misconceptions about it being the source of modern American Christmas traditions. This year, however, I’ve decided to write about it again, focusing on what we know about how the holiday was actually celebrated.
The date of Saturnalia
One very popular misconception about Saturnalia is that it was celebrated on December 25th. This claim has been repeated a million times on the internet, but it is simply not true. In truth, Saturnalia was originally a one-day festival that took place on December 17th, but the holiday was so popular and beloved that, by the first century BCE, it had been extended into a seven-day long festival, which began on December 17th and continued until December 23rd.
The emperor Augustus (ruled 27 BCE – 14 CE) tried to shorten Saturnalia to only three days of celebration, lasting from December 17th to December 19th. Nonetheless, most people continued celebrating after the holiday officially ended, leading later emperors to restore some of the days of celebration that Augustus had removed. The emperor Caligula (ruled 37 – 41 CE) is reported to have extended the festival to five days, lasting from December 17th until December 21rst.
Thus, the official length of Saturnalia varied, depending on which time period you happened to live in and which emperor happened to be in power at the time. Nevertheless, no matter which time period you lived in, by December 25th, Saturnalia was definitely over.
Animal sacrifice at the Temple of Iupiter
During Saturnalia, all shops and restaurants were required to close, trials were not allowed to be held, declarations of war were not allowed to be made, and all serious business was forbidden. The celebrations began on the morning of December 17th, when the priests of Saturnus would remove the cotton that was normally used to bind the feet of the statue of Saturnus in the Temple of Saturnus in the Roman Forum.
Then, the priests of Saturnus would perform an animal sacrifice. This sacrifice was performed according to the Greek rites, rather than the traditional Roman rites, meaning the priests would perform the sacrifice with their heads uncovered. Next, there would be a public banquet at which meat from the sacrifice would be served. The priests would place the statue of Saturnus on a couch so that the god could participate in the festivities alongside his mortal followers.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing the ruined Temple of Saturnus in the city of Rome as it appears today
The atmosphere of Saturnalia
The holiday had a carnivalesque atmosphere and was, in many ways, more like a modern Mardi Gras or April Fools Day celebration than a modern Christmas celebration. It was a riotous and unruly time when things that were normally illegal or socially unacceptable became considered normal.
For instance, during Saturnalia, it was traditional for men to put aside the clothing that they would normally wear in public and instead wear the synthesis, a kind of gaudy, colorful outfit that was normally only acceptable to wear at dinner parties. They would also don the pileus—a brimless, felt cap that was traditionally worn by freedmen.
The Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger (lived c. 4 BCE – 65 CE), who came from an extremely elite family, was proud of his toga and didn’t care much for Saturnalia attire, but he was willing to go along with it for the sake of not seeming out of place. He writes in his Moral Letters to Lucilius 18.1–2, as translated by Richard Mott Gummere:
“It is the month of December, and yet the city is at this very moment in a sweat. License is given to the general merrymaking. Everything resounds with mighty preparations, — as if the Saturnalia differed at all from the usual business day! So true it is that the difference is nil, that I regard as correct the remark of the man who said: ‘Once December was a month; now it is a year.’”
“If I had you with me, I should be glad to consult you and find out what you think should be done, — whether we ought to make no change in our daily routine, or whether, in order not to be out of sympathy with the ways of the public, we should dine in gayer fashion and doff the toga. As it is now, we Romans have changed our dress for the sake of pleasure and holiday-making, though in former times that was only customary when the State was disturbed and had fallen on evil days.”
Other social norms were overturned as well. It was normally socially unacceptable for people in the Roman Empire to feast and drink alcohol in large quantities, but, during the Saturnalia, these norms were reversed and anyone who could afford to feast and get drunk would do so. People would also greet each other loudly with the exclamation “Io Saturnalia!” and shout this while they celebrated.
Similarly, in the Roman Empire, gambling was illegal or at least socially unacceptable for most of the year, but it was temporarily legalized once every year during the Saturnalia. In celebration of the holiday, everyone would participate in games of gambling and dice-playing, including even enslaved people.
ABOVE: Roman fresco dating to approximately the first century CE from the Osteria della Via di Mercurio in the city of Pompeii depicting men playing dice
Saturnalia was also a time when traditional roles were reversed. Enslaved people were temporarily allowed to talk back to their masters. Notably, the Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus (lived 65 – 8 BCE) in his Satires 2.7 portrays an enslaved man named Davus using “the liberty of December” to severely criticize his master, accusing him of all sorts of improprieties.
Now, of course, enslaved people had to be extremely careful with their words, since they knew that the freedom of Saturnalia was merely a temporary pretense and that, once the holiday was over, if their master was offended by what they had said, he could punish them severely. Nevertheless, the Saturnalia offered them a brief opportunity to pretend as though they were free.
There was also a tradition for masters to serve a large dinner to the people they enslaved and to allow them to eat first, before anyone else in the household. The Latin writer Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, who lived in around the early fifth century CE, describes this custom in his Saturnalia 1.24.23. He writes, as translated by Robert A. Kaster for the Loeb Classical Library:
“For during this holiday, observant households do their slaves the honor of allowing them to dine first, as though on a meal prepared for their master, with the table being set anew for the heads of household only after they have finished: then the chief slave lets the masters know that it is time to dine.”
All of these traditions contributed to the general atmosphere of the holiday as a topsy-turvy time of merrymaking and unruliness. The Syrian writer Loukianos of Samosata (lived c. 125 – after c. 180 CE) wrote a dialogue titled Saturnalia, in which he portrays the god Kronos (i.e., the Greek equivalent of Saturnus) describing to his priest what the holiday is like. He declares, as translated by H. W. and F. G. Fowler:
“Mine is a limited monarchy, you see. To begin with, it only lasts a week; that over, I am a private person, just a man in the street. Secondly, during my week the serious is barred; no business allowed. Drinking and being drunk, noise and games and dice, appointing of kings and feasting of slaves, singing naked, clapping of tremulous hands, an occasional ducking of corked faces in icy water,—such are the functions over which I preside. But the great things, wealth and gold and such, Zeus distributes as he will.”
Since Saturnalia took place in the middle of December, night came early, but the celebrations did not end. Instead, people would light torches and candles so they could stay up late—eating, drinking, singing, and playing games.
ABOVE: Photograph from Flickr of modern reenactors celebrating Saturnalia carrying torches
Exchanging of gifts
Saturnalia, particularly the day of Sigillaria, which fell on December 19th, was also a time for people to exchange gifts. In particular, people would often give each other candles, which were especially useful, since the festival took place during the darkest part of the year. They would also commonly exchange cheap figurines made of clay or wax, which were themselves known as sigillaria.
By late antiquity, there was apparently some dispute over the significance of these figurines. In the first book of Macrobius’s Saturnalia, one of the speakers, a man named Praetextatus, argues that, in very ancient times, the Romans had offered human sacrifices on the Sigillaria and that the figurines people exchanged on this day were invented as a replacement for actual human sacrifices. One of the other speakers, a man named Evangelus, mocks him, declaring in section 1.11.1, as translated by Robert A. Kaster:
“Or take the Sigillaria he just mentioned: the holiday and its clay figurines are meant to amuse infants who haven’t yet learned to walk, but he tries to make it a matter of religious duty, and because he’s held to be the Prince of the Pious, he even adds in some matters of sheer humbug—as if it were against divine law for us to disbelieve Praetextatus now and then.”
The debate between Praetextatus and Evangelus reminds me of the kinds of debates people still have over whether holiday traditions have any kind of deep symbolic or religious significance.
ABOVE: Roman terra-cotta figurine of a bird, perhaps a duck, dated to the second century CE. During the Sigillaria, people would exchange miniature clay figurines.
Candles and cheap figurines, however, were certainly not the only gifts that people exchanged during Saturnalia. Prank gifts also seem to have been especially common. The Roman poet Catullus (lived c. 84 – c. 54 BCE) wrote his fourteenth poem about how a friend named Calvus supposedly gave him a collection of poems by “the worst of all poets” to torture him so that he might die “on Saturnalia, the best of days.”
The Roman biographer Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (lived c. 69 – after c. 122 CE) claims in his work The Life of Augustus 75 that the emperor Augustus took particular relish in giving people prank gifts for Saturnalia. He writes, as translated by J. C. Rolfe:
“Festivals and holidays he celebrated lavishly as a rule, but sometimes only in a spirit of fun. On the Saturnalia, and at any other time when he took it into his head, he would now give gifts of clothing or gold and silver; again coins of every device, including old pieces of the kings and foreign money; another time nothing but hair cloth, sponges, pokers and tongs, and other such things under misleading names of double meaning.”
“He used also at a dinner party to put up for auction lottery-tickets for articles of most unequal value, and paintings of which only the back was shown, thus by the caprice of fortune disappointing or filling to the full the expectations of the purchasers, requiring however that all the guests should take part in the bidding and share the loss or gain.”
On the other hand, at least by the late first century CE, it seems to have become common for people to give each other presents for Saturnalia that were actually desirable or useful. People sometimes attached short, witty poems to these gifts poking fun at the person who was receiving them.
The Latin poet Marcus Valerius Martialis, who lived in the city of Augusta Bilbilis in Spain in the late first century CE, wrote a large number of witty poems to be attached to various kinds of Saturnalia gifts. These are included in the thirteenth and fourteenth books of his Epigrams.
The gifts that Martialis wrote poems for include such diverse items as writing tablets, a set of dice, nuts, a board game, a hairpin, a hunting knife, a parasol, candles, an aulos, a broad-brimmed hat, a pig, a sausage, a parrot, a saddle, a table carved from maple wood, ivory tusks, and a Gallic puppy.
ABOVE: Composite photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing all six sides of an ancient Roman lead cubic die discovered in Leicestershire, Britain. Dice seem to have sometimes been given as Saturnalia presents.
The game of the Saturnalicius princeps
A popular game that was played at Saturnalia parties from the reign of Augustus onwards was that of the Saturnalicius princeps, which means “emperor of the Saturnalia.” The game involved people drawing lots. Whoever drew the lot of Saturnalicius princeps became the “emperor” of the party and, until the party ended, that person was allowed to give orders to anyone else at the party.
This game was clearly designed in mockery of the Roman emperor and his autocratic power. Nevertheless, emperors tolerated it because the Saturnalia was a time when the normal rules did not apply and, during this brief time, mockery of the emperor was permissible—as long as it was within reason.
Ancient writers make it very clear that the game was supposed to be nothing more than a bit of harmless fun. The orders of the Saturnalicius princeps were meant to be silly and harmless, and it was understood that, if he told someone to do something that was immoral or that they really didn’t want to do, they had the right to refuse. Most people who participated in the game seem to have done so gladly. The Greek writer Arrianos of Nikomedeia (lived c. 86 – c. 160 CE) claims in his Discourses of Epiktetos 1.25.8–9 that his teacher, the philosopher Epiktetos, said the following words regarding the tradition (in my own translation from the Greek text):
“In the Saturnalia, an emperor is drawn by lot, since it is traditional to play this little game. He commands: ‘You, drink!’ ‘You, mix the wine!’ ‘You, sing!’ ‘You, go away!’ ‘You, come here!’ I obey him so that the game may not be broken through me. But, [suppose he says]: ‘You, undertake this so that you will be among evil people.’ Then I will not do it, and no one can force me to do it.”
On the other hand, the custom did hold the potential for abuse. If the Saturnalicius princeps happened to be a bully, he could use his temporary power to humiliate and persecute those whom he disliked. The Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus (lived c. 56 – c. 120 CE) writes in his Annals 13.15 that, when the emperor Nero was young, he happened to draw the lot of Saturnalicius princeps and he used the occasion to humiliate his shy stepbrother Britannicus by ordering him to sing in front of all the other celebrants. Tacitus writes, as translated by J. Jackson:
“During the festivities of the Saturnalia, while his peers in age were varying their diversions by throwing dice for a king, the lot had fallen upon Nero. On the others he imposed various orders, not likely to put them to the blush: but, when he commanded Britannicus to rise, advance into the centre, and strike up a song — this, in the hope of turning into derision a boy who knew little of sober, much less of drunken, society — his victim firmly began a poem hinting at his expulsion from his father’s house and throne. His bearing awoke a pity the more obvious that night and revelry had banished dissimulation.”
Tacitus portrays this as an early indication that Nero would grow up to be a tyrant. Exactly how much of a tyrant Nero really was, however, is unclear and many of the most famous stories about his tyranny are certainly apocryphal. For instance, as I discuss in this article from March 2020, Nero certainly did not play the fiddle (or any other instrument) while Rome burned and, in fact, even Tacitus acknowledged that Nero handled the Great Fire of Rome in 64 CE admirably.
ABOVE: Photograph from the Uffizi Gallery website of a first-century CE Roman bust of the emperor Nero
Saturnalia and later western European winter holidays
Most people today who have heard of Saturnalia think of it as the Roman ancestor of Christmas. As I discuss in this article I wrote last year, however, this perception is not really accurate. I think that there are some genuine connections between Saturnalia and Christmas, but the popular notion that Christians simply hijacked Saturnalia by renaming it “Christmas” and that all the modern American traditions associated with Christmas are really ancient Roman Saturnalia customs is certainly false.
To start out, contrary to modern popular belief, early Christians were not in the habit of “hijacking” other people’s traditions. There are genuine cases of early Christians adopting ideas, symbols, and customs that had previously been associated with non-Christian religious traditions, but in none of these cases did this happen because opportunistic church leaders decided to hijack other people’s cultures from the outside. Instead, it happened because people within those cultures who had converted to Christianity wanted to keep their own ancestral traditions and therefore adapted those traditions to suit their new religious environment.
As I discuss in this article from July 2020, this is the reason why contemporary Orthodox Christians in Egypt still use the Egyptian ankh (or crux ansata) as a religious symbol; it’s not because Christians “stole” it, but rather because native Egyptian people who converted to Christianity in late antiquity adapted a beloved traditional religious symbol to suit the new religious context in which they were living.
ABOVE: Photograph of Patriarch Theodoros II of Alexandria wearing ecclesiastical vestments bearing the image of the ankh—a traditional Egyptian religious symbol that was repurposed in late antiquity as the crux ansata, a Christian symbol
Similarly, in late antiquity, because many Roman people who had converted to Christianity didn’t want to give up their old ancestral customs, many Roman Christians actually celebrated both Saturnalia and Christmas alongside each other. Remember Macrobius, whom I have mentioned a few times in this article already? He was writing in the early fifth century CE at a time when Christianity was the dominant religion of the Roman Empire, but, even in his time, Saturnalia was evidently still a popular holiday.
Saturnalia even made it onto Christian religious calendars. The ecclesiastical calendar of Polemius Silvius, compiled in 448 CE, lists Saturnalia as a holiday on December 17th, but does not call it “Saturnalia,” since that name had pagan associations. Instead, the calendar refers to it using the somewhat euphemistic name “feriae servorum,” meaning “Festival of the Slaves.” Christmas is listed on the same calendar, but as an entirely separate holiday on December 25th—more than a week after the Saturnalia.
Saturnalia eventually seems to have fallen out of popularity in around the early sixth century CE or thereabouts. Nevertheless, the rowdy atmosphere of Saturnalia and even some of the customs associated with it seem to have become associated with various Christian midwinter holidays. In western Europe during the Middle Ages, holidays such as Christmas, Holy Innocents Day, the Twelfth Night, and Epiphany tended to be associated with gambling, overeating, drunkenness, rowdiness, and general debauchery.
The Saturnalia custom of the Saturnalicius princeps seems to have become associated with these holidays. In England, the Saturnalicius princeps eventually became known instead as the “Lord of Misrule,” but the custom remained virtually the same; people at midwinter parties would draw lots for the position of “Lord of Misrule” and whoever drew the right lot got to boss everyone else at the party around until it was over.
ABOVE: The King Drinks, painted between c. 1634 and c. 1640 by the Dutch painter David Teniers the Younger, depicting a Twelfth Night celebration involving a “Lord of Misrule”
All the genuine influences of Saturnalia on English Christmas traditions, however, seem to have died out completely in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Commonwealth of England (lasted 1649 – 1653) outright banned the holiday of Christmas, regarding it as an immoral “Papist” holiday.
When the Commonwealth ended and the monarchy was restored, supporters of Christmas brought it back, but tried to rebrand it and purge it of some of the rowdier traditions that the Commonwealth Puritans had regarded as immoral. It was around this time that the practice of drawing lots for a “Lord of Misrule” seems to have disappeared.
Christmas as we know it today only took shape in the nineteenth century, over the course of which the holiday was almost completely transformed. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Christmas had become the much quieter, sentimental, family-friendly holiday we know today.
ABOVE: English woodcut cartoon from The Vindication of Christmas, published in 1652, depicting Father Christmas saying “O Sir, I bring good cheer” to an angry Puritan
Saturnalia, Christmas, and gift-giving
As strange as it may sound, the modern tradition of gift-giving for Christmas does not seem to have anything to do with the Roman tradition of gift-giving for Saturnalia. The Roman custom of gift-giving seems to have completely died out in late antiquity, since it is not attested at all throughout the entire Middle Ages.
The modern custom of gift-giving for Christmas has an entirely separate origin, which I discuss in this article from December 2019. The modern tradition is actually rooted in the lore surrounding the Christian saint Nicholas of Myra. From around the ninth century CE onwards, Saint Nicholas was associated with charity and gift-giving. In around the fifteenth century CE, some parents in parts of western Europe started giving their children gifts in the name of Saint Nicholas for the Feast Day of Saint Nicholas, which falls on December 6th.
Then, in the sixteenth century, Protestant reformers attacked the cults of various Catholic saints, including the cult of Saint Nicholas, regarding them as contrary to the teachings of the scriptures. The German Protestant reformer Martin Luther (lived 1483 – 1546) suggested that parents should instead give their children presents on Christmas in the name of the Christ child. This led to the tradition of Saint Nicholas bringing gifts for children becoming associated with Christmas.
Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the custom of gift-giving became more generalized and people began giving gifts to friends, family, and people they knew. The result is that we have independently developed a custom very similar to the ancient Roman custom of gift-giving for Saturnalia entirely by accident.
ABOVE: The Feast of Saint Nicholas, painted between c. 1665 and c. 1668 by the Dutch Golden Age painter Jan Havickszoon Steen, depicting children receiving gifts for the feast day of Saint Nicholas. The little girl in the foreground has received a doll.
I really enjoy these articles.
You say in your Q&A that you avoid BCE and CE and explain why, but you seem to have changed your mind recently? For what its worth, I dislike BCE/CE not because I find it in any way offensive but because it comes across as phoney for people to use the Christian calendar and then change the semantics of an acronym to pretend otherwise.
I just updated the FAQ. I’ve been meaning to do that for a while now, but I just kept forgetting.
For a long time, I believed that the BCE/CE dating system was simply a phony attempt to make the Christian Anno Domini dating system superficially “secular” by changing the letters. I thought that this was silly, because the dating system was still based on the supposed date of Jesus’s birth. I thought that, if people wanted a secular dating system, then they should just create an entirely new secular dating system that is not based on the supposed date of Jesus’s birth. Now I understand that the purpose of the BCE/CE dating system isn’t to be “secular,” but rather to avoid explicit Christian declarations of faith.
As you are probably already aware, “BC” stands for “Before Christ” and “AD” stands for “Anno Domini,” which is Latin for “the Year of Our Lord.” Anyone who uses these phrases is therefore loudly declaring that Jesus is the “Christ” and the “Lord.” They are explicit declarations of faith. They may not seem like declarations of faith to people like me who were raised in Christian homes and who are therefore accustomed to hearing titles like “Christ” and “Lord” applied to Jesus all the time, but they are nevertheless declarations of faith.
The problem is that, for Jewish people, a core tenet of their religious belief is that Jesus is not the “Christ” or the “Lord” and it therefore goes against their religion to call him by these titles. The Anno Domini system may not be truly “secular,” but it is nonetheless more respectful because it avoids explicit Christian declarations of faith. This allows anyone from any religious background to use the dating system without violating the teachings of their religion.
To be honest, I still agree with your original reasoning. I suppose that insofar as I think about it (not much), if I read CE I am mildly inclined towards thinking the author is a bit intellectually slippery and prone to privileging modishness over intellectual rigour/integrity – for the reasons you give in the second paragraph. And maybe this won’t be the only example of that in their writing, I wonder. You’ve just explained your reasons so this doesn’t apply to you but obviously people mostly don’t.
I take your point about devout Jews thinking it is blasphemous to say “AD”. But no one else says that 99% of the time either – it’s just assumed AD is the default unless people say “BC”. I suppose the one time you do see AD is when a person’s writing covers both the BC and AD period (ie blogs like yours!) so in that limited situation, you have persuaded me, and I am sympathetic to the devout Jewish writer who avoids doing so. I just don’t think that requires a whole new set of acronyms from anyone who doesn’t feel they are blaspheming. Some devout Jews say “G-d” not “God”, for example, and that’s just fine, but I don’t think that means everyone else has to.
Anyway, I know from your original FAQ that you rightly don’t like substantive discussion hijacked by the semantics of AD/CE. So I’ll leave it there unless something extraordinary gets posted on the AD/CE point – and hope the discussion returns to the Saturnalia. Thanks for explaining your thinking, though.
You’re welcome! I’m glad you appreciate my work!
I’m wondering if the revival in the custom of gift giving had anything to do with 19th century people studying Latin writings in school and deliberately appropriating ancient customs. It wouldn’t be out of character, given they appropriated Roman architecture at the same time. I know that sounds like reaching, but how possible would it be?
I personally highly doubt it. Although classical texts were the basis for much of the education system in the nineteenth century, most people at the time were not educated and probably didn’t have much awareness at all of how the ancient Romans celebrated Saturnalia over a thousand years earlier. Moreover, those who did know about how Saturnalia was celebrated in ancient Rome probably had very little inclination to imitate it in the modern world, since they would have seen it as an obsolete pagan holiday.
Another great article. Thanks.