Dan Snow's History Hit - Roman Saturnalia

Episode Date: December 4, 2024

Episode 1 in our 'Origins of Christmas' series. This Roman winter festival laid the foundations for many of our Christmas customs today- feasting, gift-giving and revelry. During Saturnalia, Emperors held elaborate games at the Colosseum while others gave gag gifts. Meanwhile, in the home, the societal hierarchy was flipped - slaves were served by their masters at the dinner table and out in the streets it was a carnival of music, dancing and debauchery.Dan is joined by Dr Frances Macintosh, The English Heritage Collections Curator for Hadrian's Wall in the North East and she takes Dan through a typical Saturnalia.Every Wednesday in December, Dan explores the history behind our Christmas traditions—from extravagant Tudor feasts and carolling to midwinter Solstice celebrations, the bawdy entertainment of the Georgians, and the family-focused customs of the Victorians.Produced by Mariana Des Forges and James Hickmann and edited by Max Carrey and Dougal Patmore.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. 

December has arrived. There are lights in people's windows. There are trees in front rooms. Shops, stores have had festive decorations up since, well, probably before Halloween. There's definitely a sense of excitement in the air. That history hit, we're looking forward, in my case, with some nerves, to our Christmas party. We're working hard on our festive TV shows and podcasts. My kids are starting to get excited about, well, presents, mostly. But

there's also skating on the ice rink and the trip into the big smoke, Southampton itself, the sea city, to watch the pantomime. Now, for my North American listeners, that's a totally unique, really fairly indescribable experience. Camp, satirical, slightly inappropriate, and yet somehow a very Christmassy show. This time of year, things just feel different. There's an energy, there's enthusiasm. We make the effort to see people we don't usually see for the rest of the year. There's a warmth in December, despite the cold weather. I think that comes from cherished traditions. Coming together to sing carols, volunteering for a charity,

making that certain type of food, or decorating your house in the same way every year with those familiar old baubles, lovingly unpacked from dusty boxes. Humans for millennia seem to have drawn comfort from doing familiar things, from the Romans honouring Saturn with gift-giving, to Vikings celebrating Yuletide on the shortest day of the year, Christians choosing to mark the birth of Jesus in December.

Each generation has inherited the traditions of those who've gone before, kept some, jettisoned others, adapted them to suit what they needed in their present. So every Wednesday in December, I'm going to be exploring the origins of Christmas as we know it today. Not focusing on the religious side of things, but the traditions that we return to and celebrate this time of year. We're going to explore some of the key moments, some of the key figures, and how those traditions were shaped. We're looking at Emperor Domitian. We talk about Henry VIII and how they still affect what we do in 2024. We're going to be travelling through the ages from the Celtic solstice celebrations to the gargantuan feasts of the Tudor court, the bawdy entertainment of the Georgians

and the influence of one particular Victorian writer on what we now all recognise as traditional Christmas. For this first episode, we're going to go all the way back. We're going to visit the Roman Empire for the Festival of Saturnalia. You're listening to Dan Snow's history hit, this is our Origins of Christmas series. Enjoy. When the Romans landed on British shores, they found a political patchwork. Diverse, competitive tribes led by kings and chieftains, each with their own customs and pagan traditions.

Some they shared, some were distinct. It seems the winter solstice, the shortest day, symbolised the rebirth of the sun and the promise of longer, warmer days ahead. The return of fruitful agriculture, of life. While evergreen plants like mistletoe, holly and ivy were brought into the home as decorations, symbols of eternal life. Proof that not everything died in the middle of winter. As well as decoration, we also think that feasting and storytelling and drinking were essential at this time of year as communities sought to bring a little warmth and joy. As the Romans sought to make Britannia Roman, they did rely on their military power to crush those who resisted, but they were also pragmatic enough to know they had to work with the grain of the belief systems of the people in Britain.

They recognised these strong pagan beliefs and they found ways to blend them with the Roman way of life. For example, the Roman goddess Minerva, the Greek Athena, became associated with Sulis, a local deity worshipped at the Thermal Springs in Bath. The site eventually became a prominent Romano-British temple complex. Meanwhile, Jupiter, the father of all the Roman gods, was sometimes merged with the Celtic sky god, reflecting shared attributes. And the good news for the Britons is that the Romans also like to have a big old celebration in midwinter. This proved a fertile place to forge common ground. The Romans had their own celebration of Saturnalia. They worshipped the god Saturn, the god of farming and harvest, which sat easily alongside these indigenous British winter festivals.

And today we're still celebrating. Many of the traditions of Roman Saturnalia are part of our own Christmas, but so too are other pagan and Christian influences which we've picked up over the years. And this is Dr. Frances McIntosh, the English Heritage Collections Curator for Hadrian's Wall in the Northeast. She's an expert in the traditions of Roman Saturnalia. Frances, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Not at all. It's a pleasure to be here. Tell me, who's Saturn and what's this festival all about?

So Saturn was the god of seed sowing and he's a really ancient god. He's founded, apparently, a fortified village and the spot where the capital is in Rome, which was called Saturnia. And he taught people how to cultivate the ground and his period of reign was really seen as this golden age of prosperity. So festival to Saturn, Saturnalia, was all about sort of harking back to this golden age when everything was wonderful and men were ideal and things all went smoothly. So pre-lapsarian age and a mythical period in history. Yeah, because in the Roman world, you know, the gods were real. And so they had at certain points lived on earth and done things. And so Saturn, his story is that he'd founded this village and reigned on earth for

a while before he became this deified being. This is the difficult bit, but the Romans did sort of allied the Roman gods and the Greek gods. And Saturn we think of as sort of Kronos, the father of Zeus and everything. Is that a useful comparison? Is that a like for like? Should we think about Saturn in a more specifically Roman context? Well, I think he is sometimes linked with Kronos. And there's loads of those Roman deities out there who've got a Greek name. And if you spoke to someone who's studied Greek, they were like, oh no, they're called this. I don't know, in this sense, when we're talking

about Saturnalia or Saturn, how much he's kind of the founding father as much. But he was probably associated a little bit, but it's his role in the Roman world, I think. And when did the festival take place? So it first started off just as one day on the 17th of December. There's hundreds of festivals in the Roman religious calendar, but by the late Republic, so sort of second, first century BC, it was between three and seven days long, starting the 17th still, but running right through to the 23rd. And it included in that big run, Opalia,

which was a festival day for Saturn's consort Ops. Ops was the earth from whose bounty you know the sustenance of life is sought so she's linked very much to Saturn because he's sowing the seed in the land and her day was the 19th December and then there was a day called the Sigillaria which was the day of president giving on the 23rd of December. So it does sort of fluctuate and, you know, as it goes through the imperial period, but it's not just one day, which is quite nice, isn't it? If you can have a jolly time for all that period. I'm for it. I'm for it. Was the shortest day of the year, was that a feature? Was it just by accident it happened then? Or was that sort of referred to and cycles and looking ahead to new, slowly lengthening days?

Well, I think the fact that he is a god of sowing and she's the goddess of sort of, you know, the earth where food is grown. In the midwinter, even though it's not quite as grim, you know, in the Mediterranean as it is up in, say, northern Britain in the midwinter. Days are short. You need something to sort of look forward to when you're thinking about plowing and planting your seeds ready for the next year aren't you so it makes sense that that's the period i don't know if they measured the length of the days exactly and knew it was the shortest day as we do now but you see through you know through the age don't you the midwinter celebrations are often about planting and

hoping for good harvest next year because you need something to look forward to because you're going into the hard months yeah exactly and the harvest in you want to get cozy what about this sort of reputation that saturnalia has for there's gift giving there's partying and food and friendship but what about this social inversion that strikes me as interesting yeah so you know roman society is very hierarchical everyone knew their place and they'd have rules to sort of keep that in place and particularly with the slaves you know slaves are lowest of the low no no kind of standing at all but on saturnalia each household would choose a mock king who would preside over the festivities.

And quite often, the mock king was someone from the lowest part of the family. So it could be a slave or, you know, or maybe a child. And supposedly as well, traditional roles would be reversed. So the slaves could sit at the top table and be served by their masters, perhaps even wear nice clothes that day. It's really sort of switching things up just for one day, which is quite nice. Was it a sort of wild time, perhaps more wild than normal, on the streets and in public spaces as well? Yeah, absolutely.

So at home, you would decorate your house, but all over the city or wherever you're living, it really was kind of a carnival atmosphere. You would be allowed to gamble in public, which was illegal otherwise. I mean, I'm sure it took place, but you know, you're allowed to do it. You would shout as you walked around. If you saw an IO Saturnalia, you don't just say sort of hello. And it's very much, it's a public holiday.

Everyone's having a great time. I think what was socially acceptable would probably be reduced. So I imagine there's quite a lot of, you know, merry people wandering around. Merry people's a good way of putting it. Feasting, I mean, there's something about this time of year, isn't it, with the feasting? I mean, did the Romans just feast all the time on their religious holidays? Or was there something particular about Saturnalia which involved really going for it like we do today? Lots of Roman religious festivals when you read it you know a feast part of it you know it's kind of like a lot of our celebrations aren't it let's

go out for a meal it's your birthday let's go out for a meal it's a christening but in Saturnalia overeating drinking singing you know getting together that was a really key part of it there were at the very beginnings of the festival, when it started back in the Republican period, there was a public festival after sacrificing the temple to Saturn, where everyone would come, but it develops and everyone has feasts at home. It's heavy consumption is expected over Saturn, I think more so than in other festivals. Do we know anything about what they ate? We have such pronounced food traditions this time of year. Was that something, do you think, that the Romans would have had?

No, it doesn't seem to have been a part of, that there was sort of set menus, you know, of certain things. It was just lots of food, lots of drink, you know, maybe slightly more expensive and luxurious meals than you would be having on a day-to-day basis, but on a grand scale. But there wasn't a set sort of Saturnalia meal that we know of.

You listen to Dan Snow's History It. There's more coming. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research

from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, kings and popes who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions

and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. Do we know anything about what gifts were given? And has your experience at Hadrian's Wall and perhaps the tablets of inland or anything, have they taught you anything about

whether people are thanking each other for things or asking for gifts? Yeah, so gift giving is a really big part of Saturnalia. It's really key, you know, it's got its own day within that run, the secularia. And the most sort of information we've got about gift-giving is from Marshall, who's a first century AD poet. He's a prolific writer, but he writes quite a lot about Saturnalia. and in a lot of his poems he lists things that could be given as presents and it's quite interesting that he says you know they could be really expensive gifts or not expensive gifts and he seems to suggest that token gifts of sort of a lower value might actually be more well received and measure better the higher quality

of a friendship so you don't necessarily spend lots of money. It's quite interesting in a lot of the debates we have nowadays, isn't it, about the materialistic nature of gift-giving whereas against a thoughtful gift. But he lists things like a toothpick, combs, lamps, a pig, a sausage, a parrot, which is quite interesting, statues.

Can I just stop this for two seconds? If anyone out there, I don't think my family listens to this podcast, but if they do, if anyone out there i don't think my family isn't this podcast but if they do if anyone out there gives my kids a parrot for christmas they're gonna have to come through me that's that's i consider that a terminal event in our relationship would you be happy with a pig that was also an option that marshall listed i'll take a pig i'll take a pig and i wouldn't i actually wouldn't mind um the gifts that marshall lists in his poems it's a real variety.

We know that Augustus liked to give sort of joke gifts or gag gifts. Suetonius, one of the sources we have, you know, talks about the lives of the Caesars, says he gave things like hair cloth, sponges, pokers, tongs, but he would kind of give them under misleading sort of names and it'd be a real trick sort of way of sort of giving them so you might get lucky i think from augustus and he'd give you something quite valuable but you could also get a sort of equivalent of a whoopee cushion sort of thing that is the ultimate flex isn't it you sort of i'm so powerful i can either give you a sort of country estate or i might just give you a piece of coal or something and it's just and then if

you can imagine all the courtiers sort of laughing uproariously. And it's just a pure expression of his power, isn't it? Well, exactly. He could do what he wanted. You know, children often receive toys, but also maybe sort of practical things. And there are some very specific things that were made. So pottery or wax figurines called sigillaria,

which is the same day as a gift giving day. So they're made sort of bespoke presents, but you've always just give something useful, something, a nice treat. What's our best account of Saturnalia? So as I said, we've talked about Marshall, who talks quite a lot about it, but obviously in poems, whereas we also got a really nice source.

So a writer called Publius Papinus Statius, who was sort of first century AD, and he's a poet in the court of the Emperor Domitian. So Domitian, who's the son of Vespasian, they're the Flavian dynasty. They're the ones who created the Colosseum. Statius describes a Saturnalia event that Domitian held actually in the amphitheater.

You know, it's a bit different. It's not at home like a lot of these ones, but it's obviously a huge show of, you know, imperial wealth. And also the fact Domitian was a big fan of gladiatorial combat and the amphitheatre. The day apparently started quite early and they talk about sweet meat raining from the line and that's little pastries containing dates and other fruits like figs that were scattered to the people seated in the amphitheatre from a rope that stretches across

that they would have used but other sort of things in the gladiatorial arena and then people who came to the amphitheatre to the arena to watch these games apparently came with baskets of bread and wine you know and sort of very fancy food while the crowd would watch the spectacle apparently there's female gladiators there which is quite rare yeah that is that is rare. That's unusual. Yeah, gladiatorial combats are free to attend. And so this is Domitian's gift for Saturnalia to the populace of Rome to put on this show. And it's his way of sort of really showing that he's got this wealth,

but also his benefaction of the populace by putting this on as an extra special thing and even providing refreshments. It was a religious festival, so presumably there is a religious focus as well in the big temple in the heart of town. Yeah, that's right. So Saturn, there is a temple dedicated to him right in the heart of Rome, and the start of Saturnalia would be a ceremony, a sacrifice to him at that temple. The priests and the higher social status people might have had to go to sort

of show that dedication to Saturn. But equally, even if you didn't go and watch that ceremony, Roman religion is just so different to any of the modern religions because they thought of them as real people who really could have an influence on their life. And so, although you can have a great time because it's Saturnaliaalia you might also make an offering to saturn because if you don't you might anger him and roman religion is contractual so if you're a farmer or you know just anyone hoping that the harvest are good so you can there'll be food to buy on the market stalls you want saturn to be happy with you and keep an eye on you and make the harvest well so you're're going to ask Saturn for that, but he will accept something in return. So that might be that you sacrifice a pig.

It might be you put up an altar. It might be you, you know, I don't know, follow the rules of Saturnalia to show that you're offering something to him because the Romans really thought that the gods could affect, you know, day-to-day life. So it was important for them. How should we think about Saturnalia and its impact on our midwinter, our Christmas holiday traditions? I mean, it's not as simple as saying Christmas is just Saturnalia, but do you

think it did have an influence on what came next? I think, you know, if you look at any midwinter celebrations, people need something to look forward to don't they because times are hard you know you've got to hope that you're all going to survive the winter and food is going to keep you going and so you can think about when christianity is becoming adopted as the religion for the roman empire they're trying to remove pagan festivals but you know not everyone is happier with the changes in religion so if you can kind of make that transition easier, then you're going to as a church. And so you can see that a lot of the traditions of the activities that you did in Saturnalia would link to Christmas. And I imagine it's just sort of transitioning. So we're not losing Saturnalia, you know, you don't get to,

you don't have to just all be, you know, sad. We still can have a celebration. And here are the things that, you know, are still similar. So nowadays, you know sad we still can have a celebration and here are the things that you know are still similar so nowadays you know in saturnalia you lit wax tapers and torches because you're bringing light into the dark that is you know midwinter we do that now they would decorate their houses with wreaths of evergreen plants give presents as we've talked about christmas almost just becomes the midwinter festival doesn't it you know it's got a very different connotation you're it's got a very different connotation. It's linked to a different god, but there are those things. You know, I don't think it's specifically because they were worshipping Saturn

and now they're worshipping, you know, the Christian god. It's just things that make that festival seem attractive, isn't it? And Frances, obviously the elephant in the room is Christmas itself is on the 25th. Is there a link with Saturnalia there, the exact date? So picking the date for Christmas seems to have been a big thing. So the first time Christmas is attested is in 336 AD, but that was originally held on what we now call Epiphany, the 6th of January, and it only moved to the 25th of December between 354 and 360. And there's a possible other pagan reason for that, the saturn pagan that's

because that's the day of sol invictus so sol invictus is or was you know the unconquered sun is a syrian sun god really associated with mithraism the cult of the sun became quite linked to imperial power so we wonder if there's some decision because nowhere in the bible does it say what day is jesus's birthday the shepherds are watching lambs which might have suggested it was spring but obviously the church has decided to keep it in that midwinter period and so the fact that it's the 25th of december and there's a link to sol is that another way of the church sort of trying to link in with previous celebrations and previous things to make that transition to Christianity more manageable for people in terms of their mindset and understanding what the meanings are?

So Saturnalia was the run-up to Christmas, wasn't it? It's almost like the 12 days of Christmas. And then they had Sol Invictus on the 25th of December, which has now become our Christmas Day. So, as Francis said, Christianity began spreading across the Roman Empire and eventually, naturally, arrived in Britain, changing once again the dynamics of these pagan winter traditions. The Romans left in the 5th century, but Rome and Christianity had shaped Britain's spiritual

landscape in enduring ways. Much of festive symbolism was adapted. The holly decorating the hearth, which had once been a simple charm against evil, became Jesus's crown of thorns, the red berries, his blood. Germanic migrants settled in Britain from the 5th century onwards and they too slowly converted to Christianity. The festivals took on a more religious nature. We have a really full account of Anglo-Saxon Christmas given to us by Egbert of York in the 8th century. He was a contemporary of Bede and he wrote, the English people have been accustomed to practice fasts, vigils, prayers and the giving of alms both to monasteries and to the common people for the full 12 days before Christmas. And it may well have been those Germanic settlers who brought with

them their own winter celebrations, Yule, that they marked on the 25th of December. We're going to get into Yule, folks, and how people through the ages have survived the darkest months in Britain, which, if you don't live here, trust me me can be a little grim. We're going to hit that later in the series when we get to the winter solstice on the 21st of December. But between now and then our Christmas story is galloping ahead a few centuries from the end of the Anglo-Saxons all the way to the Tudors. I'm heading to Hampton Court Palace to discover more about how Henry VIII enjoyed a lavish Christmas of feasting, entertainment and excess. And how the Tudors invented some of our favourite Christmas traditions.

Make sure to check back here next Wednesday for all that. See you next time. you