Saturnalia, the Roman festival of Saturn

Updated October 19, 2026 · 5 min read

Saturnalia was Rome's great festival in honor of Saturn, opened on 17 December with a sacrifice at the god's temple in the Forum and a public banquet. For several days Rome turned upside down: people set aside the toga, gambled at dice legally, exchanged gifts, and slaves could speak freely to their masters. The festival is often linked to Christmas, but the connection is far more indirect than popular accounts claim.

Origins and calendar

Roman tradition tied the festival to the dedication of the Temple of Saturn: Livy (2.21) notes that the Saturnalia was instituted when the temple was consecrated in the early Republic. In 217 BC, after the disaster at Lake Trasimene, the Senate reorganized the festival; Livy (22.1) describes a public banquet for the god and the cry "Io Saturnalia" ringing through the city day and night.

Originally Saturnalia lasted a single day. But the celebration kept spilling over: Macrobius reports that Augustus fixed three official holidays, while the people celebrated seven, as a line by the playwright Novius quoted by Macrobius already says ("the seven long-awaited days of Saturnalia"). Suetonius says the emperor Caligula added a day of his own. The festival ran into the Opalia on 19 December, honoring Saturn's consort Ops (see Saturn's family), and ended with the Sigillaria, market days devoted to the figurines given as presents.

Saturnalia customs

Plentiful Latin sources let us reconstruct the mood of the festival.

• Sacrifice and banquet. On 17 December a sacrifice was made before the temple, in the Greek manner, bareheaded. The woolen bands that tied the feet of Saturn's statue were undone (see Saturn, the Roman god).
• Party clothes. People swapped the toga for the synthesis, a light, colorful dining outfit, and many wore the pileus, the felt cap of freed slaves and a symbol of liberty.
• Gambling. Dice games, banned or frowned on the rest of the year, were tolerated.
• Role reversal. Slaves enjoyed unusual freedom of speech and shared their masters' table; some households even had masters serve their slaves. Horace shows his slave Davus using this "December freedom" to tell him some home truths (Satires 2.7).
• The mock king. A princeps of the Saturnalia was chosen by lot, a king for the day whose absurd orders had to be obeyed. Tacitus relates that the young Nero, picked as king, used the role to humiliate Britannicus (Annals 13.15).
• Gifts. People gave wax candles, clay figurines, treats or more expensive objects. The poet Martial devoted two whole books, the Xenia and Apophoreta (Books 13 and 14 of his Epigrams), to verse tags for such presents.

What Romans said about it

The festival was popular, sometimes overwhelmingly so. Catullus calls the Saturnalia "the best of days" (poem 14). Seneca, more austere, opens a letter with December est mensis: it is December and the whole city is in a sweat (Letters to Lucilius 18), before asking whether the wise man should join in. Pliny the Younger explains that he had a secluded suite built in his villa so he could work in peace while his household celebrated (Letters 2.17). In the early fifth century, Macrobius set his learned dialogue during the festival that gives it its name: a banquet of pagan scholars discussing Virgil, religion and astronomy.

Ancient writers also explained the festival's meaning. For Romans, the temporary equality of masters and slaves recalled the Golden Age, when Saturn reigned and neither property nor slavery existed. Macrobius also compares the festival to the Athenian Kronia, where masters and slaves ate together (see Saturn and Cronus).

Did Saturnalia become Christmas?

This is the most widespread claim about the festival, and the most oversimplified. Here is what can be said with care.

Historians therefore debate two main explanations for the date of Christmas: the Christianization of a solar festival, and a theological calculation. Saturnalia is not the direct source of either. Its influence is more plausible on some year-end customs, in a world that celebrated from mid-December through the Kalends of January, when Romans exchanged New Year gifts called strenae (the root of the French word étrennes). Medieval mock kings and the English Lord of Misrule look like descendants of the Saturnalia king, but the intermediate links needed to prove it are missing.

Sources

• Livy, History of Rome 2.21 and 22.1
• Macrobius, Saturnalia, Book I, chapters 7–10
• Martial, Epigrams, Books 13 and 14
• Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 18; Pliny the Younger, Letters 2.17
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Saturnalia"