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  • Fortean Times

    Celebrating Saturnalia

    Dec 02, 2021 3 minutes

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    A public holiday celebrated around 25 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?

    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 – a pointy hat. in Lucian of Samosata’s first century poem 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…”

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