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Presents that aren't exactly what you wanted.
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Party games that inevitably end in tears.
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The grumpy old uncle who ostentatiously locks himself away to get on with his work while everybody else has their fun.
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Young people getting blind drunk in the streets.
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Embarrassing office parties in which the boss awkwardly serves the wine and nibbles to the poor workers.
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Does any of this sound familiar? Well, of course it does, because we're talking about the Roman festival of Saturnalia.
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Every December, after a hard year of aqueduct building and empire expansion, the ancient Romans unwound into a week of animal sacrifice, feasting and gift giving. The poet Catullus considered it the best day of the year. But there were also those, like the scholar Pliny the Younger, who took a bit of an Ebenezer Scrooge like view of proceedings.
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And if that sounds rather like Christmas, there may be a reason for that. It's often said that the Early Christians chose 25 December to mark the birth of Jesus so that they could appropriate an existing festival, the Saturnalia, to their course.
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In this episode, we want to dig into that claim. We're asking what exactly was Saturnalia? What is the connection between it and Christmas? And how far are those of us who celebrate Christmas today also participating in a Roman festival without even knowing it?
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And all that raises even bigger questions. Should we really have our togas on? Not our Christmas jumpers? This is Instant Classics, the podcast that uncovers the ancient stories that still shape the modern world. And I'm Mary Beard.
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And I'm Charlotte Higgins. Each week we dive into the myths, the dramas and the characters of the classical world to discover what they still mean to us now.
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And this episode is a very merry Saturnalia to you. To some, he is the revolutionary hero who restored China to its rightful place on the global stage.
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To others, he's a brutal despot accused of presiding over more civilian deaths than
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either Stalin or or Hitler. Mao Zedong has one of the most recognizable faces in the world. Yet he started life in a muddy provincial village.
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A rebel son who hated his father, survived a 6,000 mile walk across China and rose to become a figure of titanic proportions from Empire.
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The Goal Hangar World History Show. I'm Anita Anand. And I'm William Durmpel. In this six part series, we're joined by world renowned expert Rana Mitta to to explore the life of the father of Communist China, Mao Zedong. We'll track his rise from a bookstore
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owner to a guerrilla commander.
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And we'll witness his ruthless elimination to secure total power.
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And we'll descend into the dark experiment of the cultural revolution, a time when ancient temples were burnt, children denounced their
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parents, and a nation worshipped a mango as a sacred relic. Subscribe to Empire wherever you get your podcasts to listen now.
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Yo, Saturnalia. Mary. I believe that is the appropriate greeting.
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That's what you're supposed to say if you're Roman. At Saturnalia, you went up to other people, you shouted in the streets, yo, Saturnalia.
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It sounds a bit Keanu Reeves to me. Yo, Saturnalia.
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Look, let's just go back a stage because I think what we need to do is say, what was the Saturnalia that we've been talking about? And I'm going to be a bit austere and give you a few basic, basic bits of information and then we get to work up to the fun stuff. The Saturnalia is in Rome. It's a very ancient religious festival. It is celebrated in honor of the God Saturn, who was a very ancient Roman God, and slightly puzzling when you look into him. It was celebrated, and this is the key. It was celebrated first of all on the 17th of December, or what we call the 17th of December, just for one day to start with. And it then expanded so that it took, in the end, almost a week. What's striking about it, if you're kind of historian of Roman religion, what's striking about it is that there were public celebrations at the temple of Saturn in the Roman forum. They are a bit weird. Saturn was supposed to have. The statue of Saturn was supposed to have its feet bound with wool for the whole year, except on Saturnalia, when they came and unbound the wool from his feet. What on earth was going on there? Hard to tell. Interesting, but, well, strange.
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Strange.
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But it's rare in the context of Roman religious festivals because it seems to have a really domestic element. Most of the standard rituals of Rome are done in public. There's a sacrifice at a temple. Nothing much happens at home. Now, the Saturnalia is a rare festival where what we most hear about is what happened at home. And that's where, I mean, people have kind of, I think, spotted or tried to spot the similarities with what. With what those of us who celebrate Christmas do at Christmas. It's a time where you let your hair down and it's a time when hierarchies, the usual social hierarchies of the Roman world are turned upside down. So it said, for example, there are slightly different accounts of this, but it said that this was a time of the year when the masters would wait at table and serve dinner to their enslaved servants. And that's the, you know, we mentioned the office party. That's the sort of office party bit of the ritual, that the people who for most of the year are really in control for this one brief glimpse of a moment, they act the part of the servants, they serve the dinner to the slaves who are supposed to have had at least a day, maybe more of riotous enjoyment, who knows?
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A
So interesting. I tend to be skeptical about this kind of moment in sort of ritualistic moment. I think it's quite easy to think of that as suggesting that the Romans were terribly progressive. They had this special time of year where the masters became the enslaved people and vice versa. But actually, I think that kind of carnivalesque moment of topsy turviness in a society is often actually strength. In the end, it's about strengthening hierarchies and it provides a kind of pressure cooker steam escape so that, you know, so that you can go back to performing your usual roles.
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That's just like the office party. I mean, nobody suggests, even if the boss is handing out the nibbles, that the next day, whatever embarrassment might have happened at the office party, we know the boss is still the boss and in some ways it makes his position stronger, not weaker. So, yeah, you're right. We shouldn't get too sort of woolly liberal about the Saturnalia.
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I think I have a question for you. Can I ask a question, do you know, or do we know how old is this festival? Does it go back into the very mists of Roman time? Because Saturn is a very Roman or like a very Italian. Ancient Italian, misty, mysterious kind of a God, isn't he?
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B
Yeah, it is said to go back, but because we don't have any evidence, any contemporary evidence for this, it's said to go back to the mists of time. And Saturn himself, I mean, just to pick out some of his features fit with this celebration. There is something about Saturn which is looking back to some sort of primitive liberty, possibly a golden age when the world was all pleasure and fun and no hard work. Other people would say, well, yeah, but it also, the name Saturn is connected with the word for sowing, and therefore it's an agricultural. I mean, sowing in the agricultural sense. In some ways this is an agricultural ritual, like probably some people would say most Roman rituals originally are. But I have to say it really is the character of Saturn, though. We'll have a look at a bit more of that in a bit. The character of Saturn is pretty murky. What Roman Writers are full of. And I do think it's quite interesting because we know more about this religious festival than we know about most religious festivals. They're actually interested in what happens at home. They're interested in the topsy turviness, the jollity. They're gambling, they're getting drunk. And of course, present giving. It's a gift giving festival.
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A
So it's easy to see why it feels very connected or at least superficially, it feels incredibly connected to Christmas. And one of the things that we have, Mary, is it not, is the poet Marshall who was writing in the first century ce. He wrote lots of little, what we might think of as poetic gift tags, little kind of two liners that you would somehow attach to your gift and then give your gift. It's a slightly mysterious to me thing. And these poems of which there were quite a bunch of them. I mean, it's not like people read them very often, I don't think. It's not something I had come across before we were working on this episode. But they give a kind of extraordinary flavor of the kind of presence that people were giving each other. And I have to say, for me, Mary, they entered strongly into two categories. Category one, the presence. Yeah, the presence. Category one was things I might like to receive or give or in fact have given or received and seem like perfectly recognizable as presents. Right. And then on the other hand, things that I would never consider to be appropriate, suitable or like or gifts that you might at all want. Well, there's a surprising number of the first category, I'd say. I don't know about you, Mary, I on my Christmas list from Marshall's gift tags.
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I think we should start a trend not calling them Marshall epigrams book 13 and 14. Yeah, we're going to call them Marshall's gift Tags.
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Right, Marshall's gift tags. Okay, so things I would like, Mary, this is a very strong hint to you, my dear. Co host. Things that I would like for Saturnalia from Marshall's list. Delicious artisanal prunes. He has many different kinds of wine. He has pens and pen holders. He has interesting different kinds of cheese, including smoked cheese. I may have given people smoked cheese for Christmas before. Truffles. Always happy to receive a truffle. I've never actually. I have received a truffle once, you know, not those little Spanish truffles under oil. Those are quite nice. Sorry. This is an insight. It's perhaps too large an insight into my greedy desires at Christmas. But things like jewelled cups, I wouldn't mind if someone gave me a jewelled cup. I think it's unlikely. Socks. Sicilian honey socks. I have to say socks. That was the big moment where you go, oh, they were giving each other socks. Amazing. And perfume.
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B
I think these are great because even if sometimes the precise object that Marshall talks about are a bit different from ours. I mean, vinegar. Don't despise a jar of Nile vinegar. When it was of wine, it was cheaper. I mean, so you're giving somebody off wine to use as vinegar. But so you get. They're slightly puzzling in specifics. But the categories, as you say, the categories are some of them absolutely the same nice delicacies. Socks for the man who you can't think what to buy for. There's some good books. You can have some Virgil, the book
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says all the greatest hits of Latin literature. He's suggesting buying your friends. Well, buying, who knows, giving your friend's copy of Virgil or of the poems of Catullus or Propertius or Homer or you know, history for the history lover, Livy or Sallust. And as you suggest, Mary, the thing that I haven't said is that each of these. Because it's obviously he is a poet. Each of these presents comes with a little. Yeah, a two line poem, witty two line poem like the one that you just quoted. So I'm just slightly at random here. Turnip.
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Yes, give a turnip.
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Turnip. This turnip I'm giving you that loves a winter frost is what Romulus has for tea in heaven. I think that can also be translated as radish. Either way, I'm not sure. I think that enters the category of perfect presents. I'm not giving this year radish or turnip. But it has this joke about, you know, Romulus, the founder of Rome is nibbling on his. Whatever root vegetable we decide that is.
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B
I think the toothpaste one is quite good. And again, it's part of the overall cosmetics, perfumery department. But here we're down to toothpaste. And the joke is, what have you to do with me? Let a girl take me. I'm not in the habit of polishing purchased teeth. So that's the toothpaste talking, saying, you've got false teeth, you don't need any toothpaste, darling. Let a girl take me. Because I don't. I'm no good for polishing purchased teeth.
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A
I think I'm more into. There's a. There's some wine which comes with the label. You honeys of Attica, you muddy the nectar Like Falernian, this heady brew is fit to be mixed by Ganymede. The Ganymede was. They served wine to the gods and mixed their wine for them. So this is like. This is a heady wine that Ganymede could have mixed.
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B
You can go even more upmarket and you can buy works of art for your friends.
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A
Terracotta statue of Hercules. I mean, I'd happily have one of those.
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B
Or a German mask. I wonder what a German mask was. If you're spending more, though, Charlotte, you can get Hercules in clay, but you can also have Hercules in bronze, which was presumably a pricier gift. Or Minerva, Minerva and silver. Silver. I think all of this is. I mean, we can kind of think that we get the point. You know, we're back there with the Romans thinking, you know, what do I get? X for his Saturnalia present? I think that, nevertheless, if you sat down and do what we've done, which is read a lot of these gift tags from start to finish, you find that some of them are instantly recognisable present things. The socks. Then you come across things that, you know, you could not possibly have given, that it would come nowhere near anybody's modern present wish list. And that includes. It includes wild animals. I mean, we're not talking kittens here. We're talking.
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There's a wild ass. There's a wild ass. I don't think I'll be giving anyone that for Christmas. There's a flamingo, a peacock. I mean, okay, if you have extremely exotic tastes and a kind of wild budget, I think, you know, maybe someone somewhere is giving somebody a peacock for Christmas. But not in my house.
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B
No, I mean, I suppose part of this might be a fantasy wish list, you know, Marshall, having fun with what you imagine you might get. But I think that you start to draw the line between the unfamiliar and the familiar quite soon. And for me, I think where I feel quite sort of discomforted, actually, is that one of the things you might give. One category of things is you might give somebody else a slave.
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A
Yeah, that's really, really. I agree. So weird reading it because it's so creepy. It's so upsetting. You might be giving somebody an enslaved cook or an enslaved confectioner or an enslaved dancer from Cadiz. And, you know, here are these kind of fun, Christmassy, Ha, ha, Christmassy Saturnalian labels that you hand over with the present. It's a real reminder, isn't it, Mary, of how just how alien this society is. And you can trip yourself up thinking, okay, they gave Each other socks. And then in the next paragraph, oh, they gave each other enslaved people.
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B
We actually know that they do this outside the Saturnalia. That one of the things that I've always found most gets you to the place of the real kind of objectification of the slave is, is knowing that some emperors for example would give slaves as you know, a dinner party going away present that really kind of reveals that the slaves could, even if they were living in the, you know, wealthy imperial houses, they could be just packaged up, gift wrap, gift tag and sent off. And for me in the Saturnalia it's a real check on this idea that oh, this was a very jolly time for slaves that there were dinners and the master would save. The master would serve the slave with a great dinner office party style. This isn't office party style. Those slaves might also have been the gifts that the master was packing up and giving to someone. The Saturnalia, the. That's not liberation for a day for the slaves.
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A
Certainly not. By the way, I would also like to say that I do not wish to receive any sow's teats, any sheep's heads, but I'm kind of borderline over a priapus made out of pastry, which is one of the things on Marshall's list. The priapus is a little figure with an erect penis and I would quite like to see someone make a priapus made out of pastry. I expect you'll have one of those on your Christmas table then.
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You're a good cook. No darling, I'm going to. No priapasis for me. I'm going to. I picked my gift from Marshall's list. I'm going to have a copy of the complete works of Virgil on parchment.
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How about that? Yeah, okay. That's very classy. That's what I'd expect from you, Mary.
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B
I'd really recommend for an undiscovered bit of Roman social history going to. These books of Marshall's poems are available online and in translation. You do. You can parachute down into the gift giving habits of the Romans which tell you quite a lot as ARS would no doubt tell you a lot about us.
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A
And we'll put those into the show notes. But Mary, there's another aspect to. You know, one of the things that we really associate with modern Christmas I think is family tension.
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B
And yes, more divorces happen at Christmas. Solicitors are busiest, divorce lawyers are busiest after Christmas than at any other period of the year. Family tensions writ large.
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A
So yeah, awkward moments, little rows breaking out, tears before bedtime, fueled perhaps by alcohol. Do we know of any bits of serious family tension occurring during Saturnalia, by any chance?
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B
Well, we do, Charlotte. You knew the answer to that one. And it's. In some ways it's my favorite Saturnalia story apart from the present. It's back in the imperial palace. We're in the mid-50s ADCE, and it's the beginning of the reign of Nero. Nero has been eased onto the throne when his adopted father, Claudius died. But there is a rival. There is always a rival in these imperial stories. And Nero's a bit anxious about the natural son, the biological son of Claudius, a young man called Britannicus, who's a bit younger than Nero but is obviously a potential rival because Nero was not the biological son of Claudius. And though Tacitus, and we'll put this in the show notes too, Tacitus the historian, in his annals, he conjures up, you know, the sutton alien moment from hell, because it's party time. And one of the things that happens at party time is people draw lots for who's going to be king for the day and tell everybody else what to do and make them do forfeits and stuff. Well, surprise, surprise, at the imperial palace, the person who draws the lot for being king for the day is the actual king. He's Nero.
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A
Right?
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B
So Nero is not only the emperor, but he's the Saturnalian king for the day. And so it's going to be forfeit time and all jolly. And he goes round the assembled guests and he gives them rather minor little forfeits to do, like jump down on the floor and then jump up again. Something that was easy to do, no problem. Might be a problem in a toga book, except you don't actually wear a toga on Saturnalia. We forgot that. You put on your parking clothes, right? But then comes to Britannicus turn, he's got to give a forfeit to Britannicus. And whereas he hasn't tried to humiliate the others, he thinks he'll humiliate Britannicus. And he asks him, you know, this is a young teenager, deeply embarrassed, he's going to sing a song in public. And Nero is really waiting for Britannicus to fumble red faces. What Britannicus does is he does get up and sing a song. But the story of the song hints at his own predicament, having been excluded from his rightful position in the succession to empire. It must have been some kind of song which was about, you know, a cuckoo coming into the nest or something like that. And so Britannicus sings this kind of fable song, probably about the rightful ruler being excluded, and everybody looks around and nods and they know what he was all about. Britannicus, in some ways, had had a complete victory. Nero has got egg on his face. But one thing we know is that's the start of Nero's determination to get rid of Britannicus not having any of that. And that is what happens. And it all started at Saturn, namely Saturnalia.
- [25:53]
A
Poor old Britannicus. You see, there was a chap named after Britain because his father had conquered southeast Britain. And there's the emperor named after Britain that we never had, thanks to his perhaps rather awkward and pointed song at Sassanalia. I suspect Nievre would have got rid of him anyway.
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B
Yeah, I think his days were probably numbered. But the moment, the turning point for Tacitus was his Saturnalian performance. And it's, you know, it's a very good reminder that Saturnalia isn't all jollity. It's, you know, it can be a time when you settle old scores.
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A
Should we take a break right now, Mary? But after the break, should we talk about all the connections that have been drawn, rightly or wrongly, between Saturnalia and our Christmas.
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B
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- [27:23]
A
Beaurie, we've talked about the ways that Saturnalia can feel a bit Christmassy, but I think what we want to do now is look at whether there's an intentional link, as it were, between the two, or whether all this apparently likeness between these festivals is more of a coincidence than anything else. And I think it would be quite interesting to talk about the way, in some way, Saturnalia is really, really unlike Christmas.
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B
Right, Yeah. I mean, I'm going to be, oh, surprise, surprise, a little bit of a skeptic here.
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A
You're going to be a bit of a Grinch and a bit of a Scrooge. Mary, as yourself, are you going to ruin all of our Christmassy Saturnalian fun?
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B
Well, not all of it. Not all of it. I'm going to make it more interesting. That's what I'm thinking now. I think there's. Underlying the connection between Saturnalia and Christmas is this sense, and it's not entirely, you know, it's not entirely wrong that early Christians did sometimes bulge on their own ceremonies, their own rituals, onto pre existing pagan rituals. And it's well known that they took over, for example, often pagan temples to become Christian churches. It was convenient. It marked their victory over paganism in a way. But it also meant that the pagan substructure was still visible. And the idea here would be that the early Christians, when they were wanting to celebrate the birth of Jesus, they didn't do this until the 4th century CE. This is a late coming festival. It wasn't like Easter celebrated much earlier when they were looking for a place to put the birth of Jesus. Then Saturnalia in December was a good place to put it. And to have a celebratory festival. Now that is logical. There's nothing illogical about that. It's just that for me, the facts don't add up. And to put it this way, you have to miss out a hell of a lot about Saturn and the Saturnalia to make it look remotely Christmassy. That's partly the character of a God. Now, we now know the name Saturn mostly because it was the God's name that was given to our planet Saturn. And we've said a bit about the potential agricultural roots of Saturn, the potential idea that there was some kind of liberatory element to this God. Well, okay, well, that's true. There were some nasty bits about Saturn. If you go and look up Saturn the God or his Greek equivalent, Chronos the God, and they merge, whatever their origins, they merge. This is not a St. Nicholas story at all. Saturn's main claim to fame in the myth is that he castrated his father. And then because he was so worried that his children would eventually replace him and overthrow him, he ate his children until his wife Rhea tricked him when she'd given birth to Jupiter and gave him a stone to swallow instead. And eventually he's made to sic up everything and Jupiter takes over.
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A
This is not very spirit of Christmas, is it? Except for the sicking part, which I suspect has happened at Christmas in some households.
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B
And I could get worse, you know, because he's also associated with myths of human sacrifice. Now, Christmas might be a bit tetchy in places, but human sacrifice is far off the scale. So I think that one thing we've got to say is that in order to make Christmas and Saturnalia sort of look connected, what people have done and scholars are, as you know, this is not just popular accounts, this is scholarly accounts have kind of simply cherry picked from the figure of Saturn to make his festival look more Christmassy. They've also. They play fast and loose with the facts because actually the 25th of December is not part of the Saturnalia. It's not a date that's included. Saturnalia starts on 17 December, lasts at most a week, and 25 December is not part of it. There was a Festival of the sun on the 25th of December, but that's something quite different. And anyway, probably more Christians celebrated Christmas in the early church, certainly in the east of the Roman Empire, on 6 January, not 25 December. So it doesn't actually line up.
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A
And there are other things that somehow get bolted onto Christmas that are supposed to have their origins in Saturnalia that I think are probably, as far as I can tell, completely mythical. So on the Internet, if you Google Saturnalia, as I did persistently, there is this idea that the reason we have holly as part of our Christmas decoration scheme is because holly was sacred to Saturn and the Romans put up holly wreaths around their homes. Now, when I read this, and I read it in some places that, you know, on museum websites and places that seem pretty scholarly, I have to say I really smelt a rat. It seemed to me entirely unlikely that the Romans were putting holly wreaths up around their. So I was curious to know what you thought, Mary, because I could find no ancient source for this. Everybody just says it as if it's fact. People selling holly trees are very keen on this fact or Eid fact or fact or what do you think?
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B
I think it's a complete myth. I say that a bit tentatively because you never quite know if hiding somewhere in Latin literature there is a reference to holly at the Saturnalia. But my due diligence that I did after seeing this too, I couldn't find any ancient reference to holly being used in part of the celebrations of the Saturnalia. In fact, there was no reference. I think most people didn't actually know what the Latin for holly would be anyway. It's ilex something. It's kind of. Now, that's partly it, the word for oak. It opens up a real black hole here that. It's very, very hard. Despite the fact that Latin is used in horticulture everywhere, you know, for posh gardeners, it's very, very hard to work out what plant in Latin is in English.
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A
And also, like you say ilex, which is confusingly ilex, which is a kind of oak, actually does look slightly holly like because it's got little prickly leaves. I mean, who knows what's going on. And believe me, dear listeners, if you know better than us and you can find a reference in ancient literature to this and tell us we're wrong, I'm here for it. But I'm going to say that. Happy Saturnalia, everyone. We have not found any reference to Holly being associated with Saturnalia yet. So we think that's a myth to bust.
- [35:45]
B
And it's a wonderful example of how factoids about the ancient world just get a life of their own, that everybody repeats them. Holly was sacred to Saturn. Your suspicions should always be aroused when it doesn't actually quote a bit of an ancient text. But nobody stops to check. And they, they go on becoming more and more certain as they get repeated. And of course they go viral on the Internet and they're based on nothing really, I think nothing. But you know, if somebody can show us wrong, we'd be really, really grateful.
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A
Yeah, we're laying down the challenge.
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B
I mean, what strikes me about all this is that there is something kind of interesting about the early church here. I mean, I think that we don't really know how early Christians celebrated the birth of Jesus. We don't really know how they decided that the 25th of December or the 6th of January was going to be the day that they would deem Jesus to have been born. And there were quite a few other possibilities, but my favorite one, and it was quite early, it was quite recognized in early theological discussions. They knew because of the date of Passover pretty closely what the date of the crucifixion of Jesus had been. 25th March in our terms. They then believed, and this is the bit I don't fully understand, they then believed that Jesus had been crucified on the day on which he had been been conceived, 25th of March, and therefore add your nine months on and he must have been born on the 25th of December. Now none of that quite adds up, but it is, that takes you much more into the slightly strange calculations of those early theologians about when, what happened and what the date of this was and when Jesus was, did this in his life. And I think this has got nothing to do with Saturnalia at all. This is a slightly, in our term, slightly weird calculation about Jesus's conception.
- [38:19]
A
Assuming they thought the conception was the same date as the crucifixion.
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B
Crucifixion, yeah.
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A
Oh, see, right.
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B
He was crucified on the day that he was conceived. And then assuming that Mary had an absolutely perfect nine month pregnancy, he was born on the 25th of December. Except they didn't agree about that either.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So if you want the kind of. The sort of. The culture of certainly academic early Christianity, that takes you into it much more than rollicking jollities to celebrate the birth of Jesus with or without the holly, that's what we should be looking at. I think. Not. Not Saturnalia. That's a good. That's a good festival to kind of plunk the birth of Jesus on.
- [39:06]
A
Yeah. Although I guess it seems, you know, notwithstanding Christianity and obviously people's deep beliefs, which I don't want to argue with, of course, but it's. A lot of cultures have a Midwinter festival, and that's a very powerful and important fact to celebrate the coming of the light in whatever way that that might be, and that. That does cross a lot of cultures. So it seems like there's a sort of commonality in the sense that letting your hair down and celebrating something, letting normal life recede for a bit at this very dark and difficult time of the year is something that Christmas and Saturnalia broadly have in common.
- [39:56]
B
And I think it's not only winter festivals. I mean, there are. There is a kind of party style which anthropologically crosses cultures with some. Not all, but some very similar elements to it. So if you look at the festival of Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras, you'll find similar kind of Lords of Misrule, similar reversals. And I think that's extremely interesting about Saturnalia, and it's extremely interesting about our Christmas. You start to say, why do we do what we do? What is it that makes this ceremony feel like it does? And there is a connection at that slightly high level between the two. I wouldn't remotely deny that, but that is quite different from tying up the. A precise genealogy to say that Christmas came from Saturnalia. And the truth is that most of the Christmas ceremonies that we're talking about, they're mostly modern ceremonies, or at least since the Reformation or really since the 18th century. They're not what the early Christians get up to at all. I mean, gift giving at Christmas is about the three Wise Men and the Magi coming and giving Christ their gifts. For me, though, I think that it's always the other side of these ceremonies that kind of bubble up under the surface. And whether it is Saturnalia, Christmas parties, Mardi Gras, whatever, I think it's not just that. You find as a very constant element some of these kind of liberation motifs, some of these reversal motifs. The other strong motif that we recognize, and you've already Mentioned a couple of times is, of course, the people who don't want to participate, that the party always depends on some grumpy old man, usually grumpy old man locking himself away and saying, well, you people can get on with it, but I've got my work to do. And there is, there is a fantastic example of that in a letter of Pliny the Younger. Now in this podcast, we've already met Pliny because he was the guy who, in one of our earlier episodes was a brilliant describer of the ghost story from ancient Rome. But he at one point has a very long letter describing to a friend the layout of his country villa. And so he takes the friend in writing round the whole villa and then he comes to a little room which is really kind of remote, well isolated, and he said, this is where I come for the Saturnalia, because I really don't. I want to let everybody else have fun. I don't want to disturb them at all. You know, they should get on with it, it's their pleasure. But I am going to lock myself away. This is where I come to do my writing, at a time of celebration.
- [43:18]
A
I have got some sympathy with him, I have to say. I am one of those people who is very gregarious and loves it all. And, you know, I love cooking and I love entertaining people and I love having people around my table, but I really also like having the opportunity to just lock myself away and be on my own for a bit. I can't take the enforced Christmas jealousy for too long. That's what I'm saying.
- [43:49]
B
I mean, I know what you mean and I have a bit of tension there, but my family, if I decided to do a Pliny, my family would say, as they already do in part, mum, you're not working on Christmas Day. Put the laptop away. So. So in my modern. In my modern reversal of norms, my laptop is not going to be opened on Christmas Day.
- [44:18]
A
I should think so too, Mary. I should think so too. Well, you have a fabulous, fabulous Christmas Day with your family and your delicious Christmas cooking, because I know you're a brilliant cook and I want to say to you, yo, Saturnalium, Mary, and yo, Saturnalia.
- [44:35]
B
To you, Charlotte, thank you. And to everybody else, as ever, we
- [44:39]
A
want to know your thoughts and comments, ideas, questions. And so if you have them, please do send them to us@instantclassicspodmail.com or on our social media at Instant Classics Pod.
- [44:55]
B
Bye Bye.