December arrives, or one could almost say November, and Christmas decorations, as well as lights, fill the streets of cities and homes. THE Christmas The current is thus linked in a certain way to the winter solstice, which takes place on December 21, with the start of the festivities which also marks the celebration of the traditional National Lottery draw on the 22nd, just before the celebration of Christmas Eve.
Although the religious meaning has been lost, and although it coexists with the rest of the traditions as they are also Christmas tree or the number of Santa Claus, The origin of this celebration is linked to the birth of the first Christian communities in Ancient Rometo whom is attributed the taking of the Saturnalia Romans for their own feast.
Are Roman Saturnalia the same as Christmas?
THE Saturnalia It was a Roman festival that took place around the winter solstice, therefore on December 25 of the calendar, and that is why it is considered an origin of the current Christmas, which is not entirely true, as historians like Nestor F. Marques done in his book Fake News from Ancient Rome.
In this book, Marqués details, as at the beginning, the Saturnalia They took place on December 17, but with the Julian reform, the Romans, not knowing whether they should be celebrated on the 17th or the 19th, opted for the establishment of a three-day festival on the orders of the first emperor. Octave Augustesomething that lasted until the aforementioned December 25th. They celebrated the end of the plantations there with banquets, lights, street life and traditional sweets.
The Saturnalia have a certain similarity with our current Christmas, and that is why they were considered a starting point, but the truth is that the two even coincided in time, since the Saturnalia was still celebrated at the beginning of the Christmas celebration of the first Christian communities, not before the second century AD, when it was decided to commemorate the arrival of a messiah and a new era precisely in the longest night of the year in the hemisphere north.
What Christmas and the Roman Saturnalia share
Although it is true that they are not the same, it cannot be hidden that they have a certain relationship between them, and that Christians, in a certain way, adapted and reinterpreted certain elements of the Roman Saturnalia, to celebrate a festival that was part of the commemoration of the conception of the Messiah.
Thus, some of the same elements are taken from the Saturnalia, such as the streets full of lights, which the Romans made with torches, the exchange of gifts during the festivals, and it is common to give figures during these festivals in the Ancient Romeas well as dressing in colorful clothing, playing raffles, raffles or betting or eating with friends or family around a table, which varied from a minimum of three people to a maximum of nine.
But one of the most singular facts is that during Saturnalia, the Romans ate a delicacy that can remind us of the Roscón de Reyesfor they prepared small round loaves with figs, dates and honey, and inside which a bean was introduced which, if it touched a slave, would temporarily free him from work and thus enable him to enjoy greater freedom than usual.
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