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. The priests would place the statue of Saturnus on a couch so that the god could participate in the festivities alongside his mortal followers.ĪBOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing the ruined Temple of Saturnus in the city of Rome as it appears today Next, there would be a public banquet at which meat from the sacrifice would be served. 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. Then, the priests of Saturnus would perform an animal sacrifice. 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. Nevertheless, no matter which time period you lived in, by December 25th, Saturnalia was definitely over.Īnimal sacrifice at the Temple of Iupiterĭuring 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. 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. The emperor Caligula (ruled 37 – 41 CE) is reported to have extended the festival to five days, lasting from December 17th until December 21rst.
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 Augustus (ruled 27 BCE – 14 CE) tried to shorten Saturnalia to only three days of celebration, lasting from December 17th to December 19th.
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. This claim has been repeated a million times on the internet, but it is simply not true. One very popular misconception about Saturnalia is that it was celebrated on December 25th. This year, however, I’ve decided to write about it again, focusing on what we know about how the holiday was actually celebrated. I’ve written about Saturnalia before-usually in the context of debunking popular misconceptions about it being the source of modern American Christmas traditions.
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. 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. Saturnalia is an ancient Roman holiday in honor of the god Saturnus that began on December 17th.
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