Five things the Romans did at Christmas

OK, the Romans didn’t actually have Christmas. And even Christian Romans didn’t celebrate Jesus’ birthday on 25 December until at least the fourth century AD.

But they did have a big festival in late December for the god Saturn (god of sowing, it is often said – but for most urban Romans his temple in the Forum was best known because it doubled as the state treasury).

And there are lots of things about this festival – the Saturnalia – that should ring a (Christmas) bell.

1) A big dinner. On 17 December, there was a great banquet at which the gods -- or statues of them at any rate -- joined in. And it was a day of release for Saturn himself, because the woollen threads which bound the feet of his statue together were cut or loosened. No, don’t ask me why: I haven’t a clue. But it’s another nice addition to the list of very weird things the Romans did.

And next . . .

2) Present giving. The real Christmas-like bit was not what happened at the temple, but what went on at home and throughout the city (where there was more eating, drinking and general wildness). The week or so that followed was a time when people gave each other presents. In fact, there is a whole book of short verses by Martial, supposedly to go on the ancient equivalent of gift-tags.

3) Time off for the workers. This was the case even for the slaves, who sometimes had dinner waited on by their masters (a custom horribly reminiscent of those awful carnivalesque office dinners, where the managers swap places with the kitchen and cleaning staff, and serve the food – and everyone feels dead embarrassed).

4) It all got longer and longer. Just like now (when my university seems to shut down for almost a fortnight), the whole thing expanded. That sober party-pooper the emperor Augustus tried to limit it to three days, without much long term success – it was soon taking up more than a week.

5) Mean Scrooges and upper-class kill-joys.  A few Roman writers enter into the spirit of the occasion. Catullus, for example, called it “the best of days”. But mostly they were supercilious lot, complaining about the forced jollity and the forced shut-down (just like me . . .!). The philosopher Seneca tut-tuts about all the dissipation and fact that you cant get any public business done. The younger Pliny loftily takes himself off to the attic to get on with his work (he doesn’t want to put a dampener on the slaves’ fun – but, more to the point, he doesn’t want to be disturbed by their rowdiness). And don’t imagine that the upstairs-downstairs divide was much lessened by the carnival. There’s a nice passage in Petronius’ Satyrica where a slave steps out of line and is sharply reminded that it’s not December.

So is this the real origin of “our” Christmas? Well, lots of people have imagined that the early Christians grafted their festivities onto an old pagan ritual. Maybe they did. But there honestly is no evidence for it, beyond the rough coincidence of dates. And, in fact, it was not until a few centuries after Jesus’ birth had got fixed onto 25 December that we see signs of much Christmas merrymaking. In the middle of the sixth century they still thought it necessary to forbid fasting on Christmas day – a prohibition which kind of over-achieved!

Comments

[Oliver Nicholson]

Surely there is already an exhaustive examination of the year of the birth of Jesus (including the elusive governor of Syria, the possible comet and the other evidence in Luke 2) in Raymond Brown The Birth of the Messiah.
Mary is surely right about the (lack of) connection between Saturnalia and Christmas. Christmas was fixed on viii Kal Jan as early as the Chronicle of 354, but became a more important celebration than Epiphany only centuries after the celebration of Saturnalia had ceased (does anyone mention it much after Macrobius ?).
The whole 'pagan-festivals-became-saints'-days' argument has its origins in 16th century Protestant polemic; it was demolished in detail (rather well, II thought) by H. Delehaye.
The story of S. Nicholas of Myra, Bari and Manhattan (as described by C.W. Jones) is fascinating, but there is no reason, surely. to think it has anything to do with an historical personage

[F.Gamberini]

Thank you, Paulo; I am glad that a couple of people on this and another thread are sensitive to my doubts on the subject. But I still think there are too many complexities around. For instance, if 6 Jan. is the birthdate, then 6 Jan. 1BCE means that the next 12 months (to 31 Dec.) belong to year 1BCE before year 1CE clicks.
If the preceding 25 Dec. is the birthdate (whether actually or conventionally does not matter, what matters is which date we take as the starting point for our chronology) this takes us into the previous year, which is then counted as year 1BCE and only a few days elapse before year 1CE clicks.
As I said elsewhere (two threads up, I think) it's all a bit of a tangle and deserves closer examination.

Federico

[paul potts]

On Christmas for F Gamberini (21 Dec 2007 AD)

Jesus' offical birthday occurs at the Epiphany, in most places celebrated on 6 January. Obviously there can be no year 0, since the birthday comes so early. According to modern calendars, Jesus was born in 1ACE. Modern scholars put the date earlier, 3 or even 7 ACE, determined to latch the Gospels into History. Well, you can try, and Pontius Pilatus certainly existed.

What we now celebrate on 25 Dec. is the feast of St Nicholas (AKA Santa Claus), one in a series of diversionary tactics, but his date, depending on where and when you look, is 9 Dec, and properly speaking, he has nothing to do with it.

Santa Claus has been taken over by "Father Christmas", who red garb suggests an advertisement for Coca Cola. In those days, it really did contain Cocaine, but nowadays "only" sugar. Eleven spoons a can, so I'm told. I don.t know where the reinder came from. But that red can also be seen in the early icons of the BVM (Blessed Virgin Mary) - a lot in Siena. Her blue came later, and much better it is.

Do you beleive in Father Christmas? It's probably better to do so.

You might like to know that in the old days in Ireland, 6 Jan was the womens' Christmas. They would put their feet up and leave the menfolk to remove the paraphenalia and enjoy the New Year without supervision. I'd like to think the custon survives.

Paulo

[StB]

> But, Mary, there was a pagan
> holiday on 25 December, for the
> 4th c Christians to take over.
> [...]:
>
> "In the year 274, the Emperor
> Aurelian inaugurated the feast of
> the Sun-god in Rome on[...]
> December 25th [...].
> The god he had in mind was Sol
> Invicta, "the Unconquered Sun",
> but the god he had in hand was
> Bel-Helios of Palmyra.

> judith weingarten | 23 Dec 2007
> 09:03:42

This is by no means my field of expertise, hence -- with all due disclaimers -- I should only like to quote a footnote which queries this suggestion:

"The Calendar of Filocalus (354 CE) also names December 25 the "birthday of the Unconquered" (sc. Sun). Whether or not the Christians co-opted this local Roman festival for Christmas is here [i.e. in the context of a description of ancient astrology] immaterial. See Hijmans [S.] 2003 [Sol Invictus, the winter solstice and the origins of Christmas, _Mouseion_, Series III, 3: 377--98] for a recent and persuasive case that they did not."

Roger Beck, _Ancient astronomy_, Blackwell, Oxford 2007, p. 142, n. 2.

[felicity]

Do you know even the Archers discussed Saturnalia this year!

[anthony alcock]

I used to know a very bright lad called Abd el Shams el Fâ'iz, from a small town in Upper Egypt (Mellawi). He had taught himself some Latin and asked me if we could read some Latin together, so we did. When we read about Constantine, he decided that his non-Arabic name would be Sol Invictus. He was musically gifted, and after he had heard some of my tapes of the erratic genius Sun-Ra, he felt that this was a sign for him to devote himself to learning how to play like the great man, so he did. I wish him and everyone a riotous holiday.

[judith weingarten]

But, Mary, there was a pagan holiday on 25 December, for the 4th C Christians to take over. I wrote about it on Zenobia: Empress of the East last January:

"In the year 274, the Emperor Aurelian inaugurated the feast of the Sun-god in Rome on the day of that god's birthday, that is, on the winter solstice, which falls on December 25th in the old Julian calendar. The god he had in mind was Sol Invicta, "the Unconquered Sun", but the god he had in hand was Bel-Helios of Palmyra." Aurelian stole the statue from the temple of Bel and built a new home for it in Rome. He held chariot races to kick off the new holiday.

More on all this at http://judithweingarten.blogspot.com/2007/01/pagan-revival-ii.html

So, Happy Bel-Helios day!

Judith

[Giles]

Merry Christmas to all !
 

[F.Gamberini]

What concerns me is how the 25/12 date affects our chronology. When we say "CE/BCE", what exctly do we mean? Not everybody (not even a lot of historians, I bet) may be aware that it turns out the traditional year of Jesus' birth is not year 1CE but year 1BCE. This, presumably, because the traditional birthday of Jesus occurs so late in the year.
At any rate, see "Jesus" article in Wikipedia
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jesus&oldid=179250920):

"In the 247th year during the Diocletian Era (based on Diocletian's ascension to the Roman throne), Dionysius Exiguus attempted to pinpoint the number of years since Jesus' birth, arriving at a figure of 753 years after the founding of Rome. Dionysius then set Jesus' birth as being December 25 1 ACN (for "Ante Christum Natum,...) and assigned to the following year "AD 1",... thereby establishing the system of numbering years from the birth of Jesus. The system was created in the then current year 532, and almost two centuries later it won acceptance and became the established calendar in Western civilization."

[Jenny]

Thanks very much Mark - I shall be saying that to everyone at the party I'm going to tonight.

[Candadai Tirumalai]

In the "liberated" 1960s a student suggested to me that I might wait on students at dinner in a manner reminiscent of the Romans. I am afraid I declined without hesitation.

[Jackie]

As a volunteer at our local Roman Museum I suggested to the Chairman a couple of years ago that, as a thank you, the volunteers should be invited to a Saturnalia party. The invitation duly arrived. I should have been warned with the timing, midday! Ah well! The thought was there even if the Saturnalian revels were somewhat lacking!

[Xjy]

As Kajsa Warg, the Mrs Beeton of Swedish cookery and household management (1703-1767), is always quoted as saying: "man tager hvad man hafver..." "You take what you have..." (though she never did actually write this phrase, her usual words being: "man tager om man så havfer kan..." "You take, if you have it available...")

We need to binge in mid-winter around the solstice. What better way of passing the darkest coldest most miserable days than partying and rushing around? And then the long but absorbing hangover of January, which is more bearable cos it's getting lighter.

[Hein Maassen, Leidschendam, The Netherlands]

I remember having read that Christmas was the christianization of the Germans' celebration of the passing of the darkest day - December 21st. But your story actually makes more sense....

[Mark]

Jenny asked 'what did the Romans wish each other at Saturnalia?'.

The answer is "io Saturnalia!"

"Io" is pronounced "Yo" - it sounds quite modern. :-)

[Jenny]

And to think I was going to ask you what was Latin for Merry Christmas! (I was picturing mediaeval monks, you understand) So what did the Romans wish each other at Saturnalia, now it's too late to include it in a card for my Classics teacher?