Lo saturnalia meaning1/4/2023 ![]() Please don't ask me to get behind that in order to do anything other than shove it off a cliff. The most popular and well known of such an event at the time of Ancient Rome was the festival called Saturnalia celebrated between December 17th and 23rd of. ![]() I wouldn't argue with any creed that held them to be central and hoped they would govern adherents' behaviour.īut please don't associate some of the best and most hopeful things in human nature with "festive" bickering, headaches, waste, loneliness, self-obsession, marital catastrophe, impossible expectations and emotional savagery. And if I'm religious, making those beliefs part of my formally spiritual world would be lovely. I need to remember that courtesy, kindness and charity are powers in the world and effective and necessary in the long term. And I can give them stuff sometimes – there's stuff they like.Īnd I need to be reminded that other people I don't know at all are equally precious and that if they're having a lousy time I should help, because we are all the same species and their loss is mine in ways that aren't just philosophical. I do, I surely and truly do, need to be reminded that those I love are one of a kind and splendid and sweet and cool and fine, and that I should appreciate them more and be sure they know they are lights in the world. But at Christmas? Really? The same Christmas that seems to be the misbegotten spawn of a Vegas wedding between Lucrezia Borgia and Jerry Springer? The one that insists I will be happier the more the interior of my home resembles the lobby of the Excalibur Hotel and Casino? The one that spends months encouraging me to believe that it can make me happy, healthy and wise for seven days to a degree that even the Waltons would find nauseating and unlikely? The same one encouraging me to shoulder the entire economy's woes by buying crap for people who don't want it, but who then have to buy me crap back? The one that traps me in unfamiliar settings with tearfully exhausted children and crashingly disappointed adults, while subjecting me to dreadful television, emotionally manipulative movies, carol concerts that remind me my voice has got old and pantomimes less entertaining than a colonoscopy but involving weirdly similar aromas? Yeah, right. Ancient sources differ on the circumstances: some suggest that master and slave dined together, while others indicate that the slaves feasted first, or that the masters actually served the food. ![]() Slaves were treated to a banquet of the kind usually enjoyed by their masters. Lord knows, I almost never get anywhere near such a thing and it breaks my heart and I would crawl over burning spruce boughs to be allowed. Saturnalia was characterized by role reversals and behavioral license. Of course, it is pleasant to sit at peace with the people you love and to enjoy who they are and to have some food around and maybe things to do, or songs to sing. ![]()
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