Christmas: Yule, Saturnalia, Winter Solstice; What's the deal? (Part 3 - III)

For Those of you following along in this series Hooray for you!

For Those of you that aren't here are the links to the first two articles;

Christmas: Yule, Saturnalia, Winter Solstice; What's the deal?

And; Christmas: Yule, Saturnalia, Winter Solstice; What's the deal? (Part 2 - II )

I would Suggest reading those before going any farther, Thank You.

PART 3 - III of my Winter holiday essay series.

The Roman Feasts of Saturnalia and To Sol Invictus:

The Roman Feast of Saturnalia was celebrated in commemoration of the Roman Sun Deity Saturn. The greeting for this event was “IO, Saturnalia!” Which roughly translated into, “Ho, Praise be to Saturn!” Originally it was only a day long celebration but it became so popular and important in Roman culture that it expanded into a week long festival. The cities in Rome were turned upside down the Slaves became businessmen and businessmen became slaves, it was all in good fun and only for the festivities. The town Mayors usually picked a citizen of low class to be in charge of the festivities as a “Master of ceremonies” for the events. Gambling was made legal for this time and even the slaves could participate. There was the making and exchanging of small gifts. The slaves were absolved from any sort of punishment during this time and treated their masters with a bit of disrespect, giving them a taste of their own medicine so to speak. Everyone wore their most colorful and nicest clothes. It was a time to eat, drink, party, and to be merry. During huge dinners the Masters would cook, prepare, and serve the slaves. In addition to the public festivities, private citizens would conduct their own parties and celebrations. It was remarked that during this time there was to be no serious business performed.

Seneca the Younger, around 50AD wrote about Rome during the Saturnalia;



It is now the month of December, when the greatest part of the city is in a bustle. Loose reins are given to public dissipation; everywhere you may hear the sound of great preparations, as if there were some real difference between the days devoted to Saturn and those for transacting business....Were you here, I would willingly confer with you as to the plan of our conduct; whether we should eve in our usual way, or, to avoid singularity, both take a better supper and throw off the toga.



In the year 274AD Emperor Aurelian created a new Roman god, a State-Supported Roman god at that. This new god’s name was Sol Invictus, and it quickly took Saturn’s place as being significant. Soon after that the festival of Saturnalia was replaced by the feast to commemorate the birth of Sol Invictus or “The Unconquered Sun.” The Week long Festival of Saturnalia was replaced by one big party day held on the day of the Winter Solstice on the Julian calendar, December 25th.

When Christianity took root and a day of worship and commemorating the Christian deity Jesus Christ was needed it seems only appropriate that it was super imposed on December 25th. Because, Jesus was the Unconquered Son to them. If you need a farther explaination of this, please go back to the first article in this series and read the Section from the book “Pagan Christmas” Titled “Sun Gods: Apollo, Mithras, and Jesus”.

Saturnalia and The Feast to Sol Invictus soon waned as Christianity and the Christmas grew in popularity. Still, if you look close enough you can find traces of these Roman Pagan Festivals in our Modern Day Celebrations of Christmas. The same can be said for the Northern European Celebrations of Yule, If you look close enough can find traces of that in our modern Winter holiday’s as well.

Thank you for your time.

Look for future articles between now and Christmas time on the Christian history of the Feast Day of the Nativity and how it came into being from a early and modern Christian perspective.

And a last article on how people choose to observe the Winter holiday time today, maybe if your nice I’ll include a modern day neo-Pagan Yule Ritual.

(Information for this article compiled with the aid of Wikipedia and PaganWiccan.about.com and Ancienthistory.about.com)

Thank you again.