Saturnalia
Saturnalia (from the god Saturn) was the name the Romans gave to their holiday marking the Winter Solstice. Over the years, it expanded to a whole week, the 17th through 23rd of December. It also degenerated from mostly tomfoolery, marked chiefly by having masters and servants switch places, to sometimes debauchery, so that the (lower case) word "saturnalia" came to mean "orgy."
The customary greeting for the occasion is, "Io, Saturnalia!" -- io (pronounced "oy") being a Latin interjection related to "ho" (as in "Ho, there").
Other Roman festivals and rites include the Ambarvalia and the Lupercalia.
It has been postulated that Christians in the fourth century assigned December 25th as Christ's birthday (and thus Christmas) because pagans already observed this day as a holiday. This would sidestep the problem of eliminating an already popular holiday while Christianizing the population.
Referenced By
17 December | 17th December | AllSaints | All Saints | All Saints Day | Ambarvalia | Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius | Christmas like festivals | Conspicuous consumption | Cronos | Cronus | December 17 | December 17th | Hallowmas | Kronus | List of religious topics | List of religious topics (G-M) | List of religious topics (N-S) | List of religious topics (T-Z) | List of winter festivals | Lord of Misrule | Macrobius | Pathological consumption | Pathological purchasing | Publius Papinius Statius | Publius Septimius Geta | Roman Mythology | Roman festivals | Roman god | Roman goddess | Roman goddesses | Roman gods | Roman myth | Roman religion | SantaCon | Saturn (god) | Saturn (mythology) | Statius | The stories of the Roman religion | Wheel of the Year | Winter Solstice
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