An Irish Diary

Going Rome for Christmas – An Irishman’s Diary on the enduring appeal of Saturnalia

Roman second-century bas-relief of Saturn holding a scythe

Frank McNally's face
Frank McNally
Sat Dec 17 2016 - 00:01

I see where a Turkish bishop has condemned the materialism of Christmas, which he suggested is putting parents under unnecessary financial pressure while making children greedy.

In a homily, Bishop Asterius condemned the secular celebrations as "the source of debt and usury, the occasion of poverty, the beginning of misfortunes" for many adults.

But he especially lamented their effect on the young. “The festival teaches even the little children, artless and simple, to be greedy,” he said. For even when giving presents, they did so in the hope of getting something more valuable in return: “Thus the tender minds of the young begin to be impressed with that which is commercial and sordid”.

No, it’s not news that a cleric might say this sort of thing.

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And in fact, it’s not news in any sense, since Asterius made the comments 16 centuries ago, in his new year sermon of AD 400.

But his words had somehow passed me by until this week, when I saw them in a new book called Christmas in the Crosshairs: Two Thousand Years of Denouncing and Defending the World's Most Celebrated Holiday. The book is by Gerry Bowler, a modern-day clergyman from Canada, who would also defend the true meaning of Christmas against detractors, including, in his case, people who say "happy holidays" rather than risk offence.

But it set me searching for the full text of Asterius’s ancient sermon, which I found on a site called earlychristianwritings.com, and which has weathered surprisingly well.

Many latter-day curmudgeons could echo his complaint, for example, that Christmas is “misnamed a feast, being full of annoyance”. Equally contemporary is his lament of the practice whereby presents are often not even kept, but “handed on from one to another”.

He speaks too of people “wearing [themselves] out preparing for” the feast – a sentiment that may be repeated verbatim in many homes next week.

And he even takes a sideswipe at the insincerity of social kissing: “The mouth indeed is kissed, but it is the coin that is loved”.

Of course a key difference between Asterius’s sermon and Bowler’s book is that, where the latter is defending the Christmas now seen as traditional, the former was arguing in favour of new, improved (as he believed) version, then still struggling to catch on.

Christianity was a relatively recent arrival in Turkey. So the celebrations Asterius was complaining about were the traditional Roman ones of Saturnalia and New Year.

When he sighed “Oh, the absurdity of it!”, it was the lingering pagan practices of gift-giving, drunkenness, and overeating he was trying to eradicate.

And as we know, 16 centuries later, that remains a work in progress. You have to hand it to the Romans – as well as building very durable bridges and aqueducts, they knew how to construct a popular mid-winter festival too.

By tradition, Saturnalia began on December 17th. So it’s well-timed this year, coinciding with a Saturday, named for the same god. And if Asterius slipped through some time-warp tonight and emerged in Dublin’s Temple Bar, he might be surprised at how many cultural practices he would still recognise.

Even the Saturnalian habit of casting off togas in favour of more colourful (and tasteless) clothing seems to have survived, in the form of jumpers.

Maybe the only tradition to have fully disappeared is the one whereby masters and servants changed places at this time, and the related festival of satire, in which people were free to speak their mind about authority, without consequence. It was of course, only temporary. And in some accounts, the overall “Lord of Misrule” would pay for it at the end, by being sacrificed.

As I say, this part of Roman Christmas has vanished, although ironically, some of Ireland's most devout Christians seem to be reviving it this year. I mean the Democratic Unionist Party, and its role in the North's uncapped Renewable Heat Incentive scandal, which reportedly led to some of the world's warmest barns and looks like costing hundreds of millions of pounds.

Not only has this produced an Irish political row that finally justifies the cliché, “heated exchanges”, it has also resulted in an unprecedented outburst of free speech among those involved.

In an astonishing BBC interview on Thursday, former minister Jonathan Bell said three times that he had decided to speak the truth, "though the heavens fall". The North's heavens remained intact (if overheated) on Friday. But it seems clear that when these Saturnalian excesses are over, at least one Lord of Misrule will have to be sacrificed.

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