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8 - SEXY GLAM MAGAZINE - JANUARY 2021
It was a public holiday celebrat-
ed around December 25th in the fam-
ily home. A time for feasting, goodwill,
generosity to the poor, the exchange
of gifts and the decoration of trees. But
it wasn’t Christmas. This was Saturna-
lia, the pagan Roman winter solstice
festival. But was Christmas, Western
Christianity’s most popular festival,
derived from the pagan Saturnalia?
The first-century AD poet Gaius Vale-
rius Catullus described Saturnalia as
‘the best of times’: dress codes were
relaxed, small gifts such as dolls, can-
dles and caged birds were exchanged.
Saturnalia saw the inversion of social
roles. The wealthy were expected to
pay the month’s rent for those who
couldn’t afford it, masters and slaves
to swap clothes. Family households
threw dice to determine who would
become the temporary Saturnalian
monarch. The poet Lucian of Samosa-
ta (AD 120-180) has the god Cronos
(Saturn) say in his poem, Saturnalia:
‘During my week the serious is barred:
no business allowed. Drinking and be-
ing 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 – such are the functions over
which I preside.’
Saturnalia originated as a farmer’s
festival to mark the end of the autumn
planting season in honour of Saturn
(satus means sowing). Numerous ar-
chaeological sites from the Roman
coastal province of Constantine, now
in Algeria, demonstrate that the cult of
Saturn survived there until the early
third century AD.
Saturnalia grew in duration and moved
to progressively later dates under the
Roman period. During the reign of the
Emperor Augustus (63 BC-AD 14), it
was a two-day affair starting on De-
cember 17th. By the time Lucian de-
scribed the festivities, it was a sev-
en-day event. Changes to the Roman
calendar moved the climax of Saturna-
lia to December 25th, around the time
of the date of the winter solstice.
From as early as 217 BC there were
public Saturnalia banquets. The Ro-
man state cancelled executions and
refrained from declaring war during
the festival. Pagan Roman authorities
tried to curtail Saturnalia; Emperor
Caligula (AD 12-41) sought to restrict
it to five days, with little success.
Emperor Domitian (AD 51-96) may
have changed Saturnalia’s date to De-
cember 25th in an attempt to assert
Did the first Christian Roman emperor appropriate the pagan festival of
Saturnalia to celebrate the birth of Christ?