If you think Christmas and Hanukkah are a lot of work, just be glad that Saturnalia is no longer on the calendar.
Saturnalia, an ancient Roman festival of the winter solstice, was originally celebrated for three days beginning December 17th, but later extended to seven days – seven days of non-stop revelry that make all modern celebrations pale by comparison.
A large and important public festival in Rome, it was by far the most popular. Besides the public rites there were a series of private family celebrations as well.
If you would like to learn a little more about it, enjoy a good mystery and have a few laughs at the same time, try Lindsey Davis’s Saturnalia, the eighteenth title in her Marcus Didius Falco series, in which Davis does her usual sound job of bringing first-century Rome to life.
Set in Rome in 76 CE against the riotous backdrop of the season of misrule, Falco, with an imperial commission from Emperor Vespasian, is pitted against his old rival, the Chief Spy Anacrites, in a race to find Veleda, a rebellious German priestess believed to have murdered a nobleman of the household where she was being held under house arrest awaiting execution as part of the morally depraved city’s festival activities.
Woven into the tale, in Davis’s own inimitable style, are Falco’s personal holiday woes. What to buy for his wife? What to buy for his mother? Whose household will host each night’s festivities? Where has his brother-in-law disappeared to? What will happen if his estranged parents both show up?
Sound familiar?
Happy holidays.