This date (December the 21 st or 22 nd of December) has been a significant date in many religions and cultures and represents the death and rebirth of the Sun.Īnother pagan festivity happening in the same week precisely on December the 25 th, was the Natalis Invicti, the day of Mithra Sol Invictus (but this god become popular only starting from the III AD). It’s a week of chaotic freedom, the passage to the new year before the arrival of Janus, the celebration of the end of the the season, connected to the winter solstice date. The most popular part of the celebration was the exchange of small gifts as sigillaria (terracotta dolls) or caeri (wax candles).ĭuring this short festival, illegal and socially condemned activities like gambling were allowed and tolerated: only during Saturnalia was OK to earn money without any labour, like happened during the Saturn reign. Slaves were served by their masters, the patricians were dressed like liberti (freedmen).Īll men were equal, and slaves were onorated like maybe in original version of the festivity the farmers: it’s the end of the harvest season, after the seeding, we all rest, waiting for Spring, while the God Saturn is protecting the seed. According to Seneca “ All Rome seems to go mad during Saturnalia“ The celebration was followed by 7 days of holidays.ĭuring this festivity the rules of the Roman society were turned upside down, trying maybe to to replicate the golden age of Saturn: no transactions, no lawsuits (tribunals were closed) no farming, no separation of social classes. The sacrifice was followed by a rich banquet, ending with the guests screaming loud the salute: “ Io, Saturnalia!” (I, Saturnalia). The official day of celebration was the 17 th of December, a public cerimony was celebrated on the altar of Saturn at the slope of the Capitoline Hill, where even today stand the Temple of Saturn: maybe for its connection of a mytical age of prosperity, Saturn was also the keeper of the state treasury. No wonder that his festivity was one of the most important in Rome: Saturnalia, every year from December the 17 th to 23 rd.

Despite that, the god Saturn has always been central in the Roman literature and popular devotion, especially as the bearer of the golden age, a mythical lost moment of happiness. The Romans of the republican age knows very little about the original character of the God, due to the massive hellenization of the local myths, ended in the fusion with the Greek titan Kronos. When Saturn suddenly”disappeared”, the age of Jupiter begun: the age of men, with labour, violence and social divisions. His arrival started the “time of Saturn”, the golden age, a season of peace and happiness, when man were living together without greed and violence, and the ground was providing food without any hard work.

He was welcomed by the local god Gianus, the two faces god of beginnings, who donated him the Capitoline Hill (named after him “Mons Saturnius”). His name Saturn was connected to the word SATUS (sowin), for his being who introduced farming in the area, and his wife was the goddess of prosperity Ops, the mother of every living being. He was an old man, dressed in a purple cloak and holding a scythe. Saturn, fragment of an ancient fresco from Pompei (62-79 AD)Īccording to an old Roman myth, the god Saturn, exiled by his son Jupiter, arrived in Rome centuries before its foundation.

Saturnalia and christmas