Word: saturnalia
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Christmas Trees: The "tannenbaum" finds its roots in the evergreens used for winter solstice festivals to show that life survives even in the cruelest seasons. The Egyptians erected green date palms indoors during their winter solstice rites; the Romans hung trinkets on pine trees during the Saturnalia; the druids placed candles, cakes and gilded apples in tree branches as offerings...
...Roman Saturnalia, these revels were explosions of license and merry-making, and featured drinking and debauchery, houses decked with laurels and evergreens, feasting, bonfires and an exchange of presents. Christian missionaries, finding that they could not get converts to refrain from the festive activities, pleaded with Rome to give the festivals a Christian excuse. In 352 A.D., Pope Julius I decreed Christmas December...
...prescribed ceremony or routine usually with religious overtones. In the most provocative section of American Patriots. Shaw analyzes how the rituals of colonial society--paramount among them local celebrations of religious and secular holidays--might easily have been converted to revolutionary purposes. Such celebrations, particularly the annual Saturnalia, featuring mock overthrows of legitimate and illegitimate rulers, expressed, says Shaw, a profound ambivalence toward authority. While stating that the highly moral and serious-minded leaders of the revolution were not caught up in this almost sensual form of protest, Shaw does suggest that "their strength derived from the popular rehearsal...
...dethroned by Zeus (who became the king of the gods), Cronus went off to rule another kingdom, where he reformed his ways and taught people the secrets of planting. The Romans knew Cronus as Saturn, and as a god of fertility and planting. Every Dec. 17 they staged the Saturnalia in his honor. At this time there was gift giving, drinking and wenching and suspension of punishment for criminals...
...Romans indulged in a colossal round of drinking, carousing and tumultuous revelry. The orgiastic festival, perhaps coinciding with the winter planting, was staged to propitiate Saturn, the sickle-wielding deity of agriculture. Now scientists gathered at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena may be tempted to hold their own Saturnalia. Next week, after traveling for more than three years, their robot Voyager 1 spacecraft will achieve its closest encounter with Saturn, providing the most spectacular view yet of the beautifully ringed planet and its system of moons...