Unwrapping the Christmas Gift

For ancient Romans 17th December marked the first day of their last major winter festival : Saturnalia, in honour of their god Saturn. There are already a handful of posts on Saturnalia, accessible from the Label Cloud in the sidebar. Let's see what else can be dredged up on the topic!

One of the major ingredients of our time's Christmas celebrations is the giving and receiving of gifts. Christians might suppose that this tradition stems from the story of the 3 Wise Men visiting the baby Jesus, bringing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh - not sure that's true, but seems likely. There's another reason though. Saturnalia. As well as a holiday from school for pupils, the establishment of a special market; freedom to gamble for all, slaves included; less restraints on drinking and more wine available to slaves; official dress (togas) not worn but all wore the pilleus -freed man's hat. [I wonder if this is the root of those darned paper hats beloved of Christmas party givers - in Britain if not in the USA?] Slaves were exempt from punishment and allowed to disrespect masters; also...getting to it now....another tradition of Saturnalia was the buying and giving of presents.

Lists of "what to buy for...whomever" in Roman times included: writing tablets of various kinds, dice, nuckle [sic] bones, moneyboxes, combs, toothpicks, a hat, a hunting knife, an axe, various lamps, balls, perfumes, pipes, a pig, a sausage, a parrot, tables, cups, spoons, items of clothing, statues, masks, books, pets.
(Information from Martial Epigrams Book 14 (c. 84 or 85 A.D.)

So, take Saturnalia's traditions, Sol Invictus celebrations, northern traditions of Santa Clausian activity and evergreen trees, add Christianity, stir briskly, leave to marinate for many centuries, and serve well seasoned!

Saturn versus Saturnalia

17 December, in the Roman calendar, marked the beginning of Saturnalia, a two-week festival celebrating the god Saturn. Because, in traditional astrology, Saturn the planet has been labelled a malefic - the "greatest malefic" in fact, one might find it puzzling that Romans celebrated so enthusiastically the god after whom the planet has been named. Or, conversely, why the farthest visible planet from Earth was so named, and accredited as malefic when its godly namesake had been so obviously revered.

In her book Mythic Astrology, astrologer Liz Greene began a chapter on Saturn thus:

The Golden Age is an ancient and indestructible human dream. Not only the bible, but the myths of the Sumerians, Babylonians, Greeks and Romans describe it, each with its own story of a Fall when divine law was transgressed by erring humans. And we conjure up the dream of the Golden Age now, whenever we turn to the past and glimpse the shining vision of a time of law and order, when human beings lived in harmony with the cycles of nature and had not yet degenerated into violence and corruption. In Hesiod's Cosmogony this Golden Age was under benign rule of the stern but just Greek deity, Kronos, whom the Romans called Saturn. He was god of earth, not of heaven, and he governed the orderly cycles of the seasons, the irrevocable passage of time, and the laws by which men and women might live in accordance with nature and their own mortality. As patron of agriculture and lord of the harvest, he symbolized the fertility of the tilled earth and conferred the rewards of honest effort. He was a working god and a wise king, who taught men and women how to press the olive and cultivate the vine. To those who obeyed his laws of discipline, time and mortality, he was a generous ruler who offered peace and abundance. To those who sought to impose their own will on the laws of life itself, he was a merciless and implacable judge. The Romans worshiped his friendly face at the year's end through the two-week carnival of the Saturnalia, which even Rio, in Brazil, has never succeeded in surpassing. It has been suggested that the name Saturn comes from the Latin 'sator', meaning to sow; and on the most profound level this god symbolized the dictum that as we sow, so shall we reap.

In Louis MacNeice's book, Astrology, I found the illustration below - click on it for a sharper image:

15th-century German allegorical picture of Saturn and some of the types of people associated with this planet. Saturn, depicted as aa horseman, rides in the sky above his two Zodiac signs, Capricorn and Aquarius. To astrologers, Saturn's influence is mostly malignant, causing misfortune, disease and death - indicated here by the criminals in the stocks and on the gallows and the hobbling cripple. Some less unfortunate Saturn types portrayed are the farmer (plowing), the gardener (digging), and the tanner (skinning a horse).

Saturnalia was in no way malignant, apart perhaps from a few nasty hangovers after days of carousing. During the long festival all social hierarchies and obligations were temporarily suspended, creating a period of chaos, a world upside down, symbol of renewal.

From Winter Solstice Traditions. Hat tip HERE

The Romans called it Dies Natalis Invicti Solis, the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun. The Roman midwinter holiday, Saturnalia, was both a gigantic fair and a festival of the home. Riotous merry-making took place, and the halls of houses were decked with boughs of laurel and evergreen trees. Lamps were kept burning to ward off the spirits of darkness. Schools were closed, the army rested, and no criminals were executed. Friends visited one another, bringing good-luck gifts of fruit, cakes, candles, dolls, jewellery, and incense. Temples were decorated with evergreens symbolizing life's continuity, and processions of people with masked or blackened faces and fantastic hats danced through the streets...... Roman masters feasted with slaves, who were given the freedom to do and say what they liked (the medieval custom of all the inhabitants of the manor, including servants and lords alike, sitting down together for a great Christmas feast, came from this tradition). A Mock King was appointed to take charge of the revels (the Lord of Misrule of medieval Christmas festivities had his origin here).

So... Saturnalia was a reverse of the Saturnian norm, an annual loosening of daily demands, bonds and customs. Sounds like a good idea! As Mick Jagger is credited as having said though, "It’s okay to let yourself go, just as long as you let yourself back." That is a fairly Saturnian statement to my mind. Hmmm. Well, well, well, whad'ya know? Jagger has Saturn in his first house, could be quite close to his ascending degree. (See astro.com HERE.)

Io Saturnalia ....Eeee-0h Eleven

Saturnalia has come around once more. What to write about this ancient Roman festival that hasn't been written before by many and many more, including me (here).
Casting around for an idea I noticed this on a blog called No Gods No Masters:

To celebrate Romans would untie the ropes on the statue of Saturn that usually bound him the rest of the year. The traditional greeting for the holiday was 'Io, Saturnalia!" (pronounced ee-oh), which means "Ho, Glory to Saturn!"

My butterfly mind skipped immediately to Sammy Davis singing Ee-oh Eleven in the 1960 "Rat Pack" movie Ocean's Eleven. Hmmm. It seems unlikely that Sammy D. was singing "Ho Glory to Eleven", even though certain members of the Rat Pack had Italian roots and could possibly have inherited the expression "Io"; they definitely inherited some of the debauchery of Saturnalia, carried it out, and not just in December - so rumour has it!

I searched for information on "eee-oh eleven" and found these gambling-related answers :

The eleven in craps is referred to as a 'Yo, an abreviated version of a dealer yelling out "Eeeeeeee-yo-leven", harking back to the old days in the gambling halls in the West and on Mississippi riverboats.

When an eleven comes up on the dice the "stickman" says it this way so it does not confuse the players and other dealers with the similar sounding seven.

A player might call, "$1 on the yo," and throw a dollar chip to the stickman. This "yo" is the shortened version of "eee-ooo-eleven" which players often yell at the thrown dice if they have money riding on the eleven.

An eleven can only be rolled (dice) by a combination of one even and one odd (specifically, one six and one five). So, E-O Eleven, means even, odd, eleven. E-O has turned into Yo because it's quicker to say.

So no connection between Io and eee-oh then. Pity!

Er....Saturnalia....there's a nice blog post on it at the Meme Merchant "Oh and One More Thing" And another at the link already mentioned above for No Gods No Masters "Io Saturnalia".

That song I mentioned - nothing to do with the festival at all, but it's catchy:

The.... "Roots of Our Raising'"

SATURNALIA - the roots of the annual festivities (exclusive of their later Christian significance) we either enjoy or dread, according to individual circumstance and taste. Symbols from other cultures have been layered atop the foundation, of course - and perhaps even a few from still earlier cultures lurk within, too far back in the mists of time for us to be certain.

In ancient Rome on 17 December and for the following seven days the people celebrated in honour of Saturn - not the planet - the god of sowing and husbandry. The goings-on during that wild week of debauchery would probably make even our 21st century hair stand on end! Oh.....I don't know though, maybe not. I came across this SATURNALIA cartoon strip from the mid 1990s the other day. It's not for the faint-hearted, there's nudity, sex, and historical narrative which could well be considered blasphemous....so if any of that would make you feel queasy, "Don't look Ethel!" The cartoonist responsible was Patrick Farley.

Yes, I was kidding myself when I wrote that Rome's December debaucheries would make our hair stand on end. Our 21st century western society has devolved into a kind of savage burlesque, and is quite possibly even now travelling the same road on which the Romans met their fate.

Anyway, on a more scholarly and sedate note, here's what Sir James George Frazer, British anthropologist (1854-1941) wrote about Roman Saturnalia in his famous work The Golden Bough:

§ 3. The Roman Saturnalia

WE have seen that many peoples have been used to observe an annual period of license, when the customary restraints of law and morality are thrown aside, when the whole population give themselves up to extravagant mirth and jollity, and when the darker passions find a vent which would never be allowed them in the more staid and sober course of ordinary life. Such outbursts of the pent-up forces of human nature, too often degenerating into wild orgies of lust and crime, occur most commonly at the end of the year, and are frequently associated, as I have had occasion to point out, with one or other of the agricultural seasons, especially with the time of sowing or of harvest. Now, of all these periods of license the one which is best known and which in modern language has given its name to the rest, is the Saturnalia. This famous festival fell in December, the last month of the Roman year, and was popularly supposed to commemorate the merry reign of Saturn, the god of sowing and of husbandry, who lived on earth long ago as a righteous and beneficent king of Italy, drew the rude and scattered dwellers on the mountains together, taught them to till the ground, gave them laws, and ruled in peace. His reign was the fabled Golden Age: the earth brought forth abundantly: no sound of war or discord troubled the happy world: no baleful love of lucre worked like poison in the blood of the industrious and contented peasantry. Slavery and private property were alike unknown: all men had all things in common.

At last the good god, the kindly king, vanished suddenly; but his memory was cherished to distant ages, shrines were reared in his honour, and many hills and high places in Italy bore his name. Yet the bright tradition of his reign was crossed by a dark shadow: his altars are said to have been stained with the blood of human victims, for whom a more merciful age afterwards substituted effigies. Of this gloomy side of the god’s religion there is little or no trace in the descriptions which ancient writers have left us of the Saturnalia. Feasting and revelry and all the mad pursuit of pleasure are the features that seem to have especially marked this carnival of antiquity, as it went on for seven days in the streets and public squares and houses of ancient Rome from the seventeenth to the twenty-third of December.

....................masters actually changed places with their slaves and waited on them at table; and not till the serf had done eating and drinking was the board cleared and dinner set for his master. So far was this inversion of ranks carried, that each household became for a time a mimic republic in which the high offices of state were discharged by the slaves, who gave their orders and laid down the law as if they were indeed invested with all the dignity of the consulship, the praetorship, and the bench. Like the pale reflection of power thus accorded to bondsmen at the Saturnalia was the mock kingship for which freemen cast lots at the same season. The person on whom the lot fell enjoyed the title of king, and issued commands of a playful and ludicrous nature to his temporary subjects. One of them he might order to mix the wine, another to drink, another to sing, another to dance, another to speak in his own dispraise, another to carry a flute-girl on his back round the house........................................

Roman soldiers at Durostorum in Lower Moesia celebrated the Saturnalia year by year in the following manner. Thirty days before the festival they chose by lot from amongst themselves a young and handsome man, who was then clothed in royal attire to resemble Saturn. Thus arrayed and attended by a multitude of soldiers he went about in public with full license to indulge his passions and to taste of every pleasure, however base and shameful. But if his reign was merry, it was short and ended tragically; for when the thirty days were up and the festival of Saturn had come, he cut his own throat on the altar of the god whom he personated.

Below: Romans of the Decadence by Thomas Couture (1815-79).

Let's haul ourselves back a century or several to acknowledge the source of my post title - though it's nothing at all to do with Saturnalia: Merle Haggard, as he was in his younger days sings "The Roots of My Raising":

Saturnalia - Immigrant Style

Coming up tomorrow -17th December - The Lord of Misrule


The first day of the Roman festival Saturnalia.
It was a period of great feasting and festivity, with a lot of
drinking and eating. Slaves would become masters for the
festival, and everything was turned upside down. This part
of the Roman festival survived into the 17th Century.

Saturnalia in our world will not look quite like this, not unless the finger printing staff at the Immigration and Citizenship Office in Oklahoma City are having an off day (or on-day?) Or unless HeWhoKnows decides to let his hair down.




This'll be our version of it.
Good old Saturn - gotta love him!

Tomorrow, 17 December, Saturnalia for us will be spent acknowledging a different side of Saturn - laws, government, red tape. It's the date I've been summoned for fingerprinting at the "local" office of the Immigration and Citizenship Service, 80 miles distant. There'll be a gaggle of planets in Sagittarius quite close to my natal Venus (19.59 Sagittarius), so I'm thinking that I'll adopt Sagittarius as "the immigrant's sign".

This will be the third, or maybe fourth time they've taken my prints. This time, I understand they are to assist in a background check to be carried out by the FBI. Yet another background check. (All very Saturnian!) They've done it all before, too, when they first allowed me into these shores, as Mrs.HeWhoKnows. They are insatiable!

I'm told, also, that notification of a date for my main interview and test on civics may be expected "within 365 days". No voting for me in 2008 then. Yet more Saturnian limitations.

Due to wintery weather here, lots of ice, we're going off to the City later today and hope to find a nice warm motel where the power has been restored after last week's ice storm. Blogging will probably be suspended until Tuesday. Brrrrrr!