Io, Saturnalia!

Saturnalia, by SMMT Outdoors

A Vespers Sermon for the Second Week of Advent

A Reading from the Prophet Isaiah:

The wolf shall live with the lamb; the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the lion will feed together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.

They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Sermon:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

“Io Saturnalia!”

So the ancient Romans would proclaim on December 17th, their preëminent winter festival. On this day—soon extended to three days, then to seven—sacrifices would be held at the temple of Saturn, father of the Olympian gods. Revellers would gather together at public feasts, then retire for private gift-giving with family and friends, often exchanging gag gifts, white elephant gifts. Meats, sweets, and wine flowed freely, including little deep-fried cheesecake bites made with sesame seeds and honey. I’m hoping to add that to our Yuletide repertoire.

For Rome, this hearkened back to a mythical golden age, when human beings lived in innocence and equality under the kingship of Saturn. For the Jewish authors of the Babylonian Talmud, the celebration seemed an echo of the Garden of Eden, proof that even pagans remembered Adam and Eve. Gambling, typically illegal under Roman law, would be permitted for the holiday, when social norms more generally found themselves turned upside-down. Masters served slaves; the rich served the poor; with a King of Saturnalia proclaimed to rule over all of the merriment. The poet Catullus called Saturnalia, “the best of days.”

Is any of this sounding familiar?

Christianity has oft been accused of stealing other holidays, whitewashing pagan festivals. Historically it’s been other Christians making such accusations, but now the culture as a whole has jumped onto the bandwagon. And certainly there are aspects of Saturnalia which we have carried over: the medieval Lord of Misrule, for example, or the fact that we still commemorate Adam and Eve on December 24th, immediately following Saturnalia.

But the timing isn’t the same. The date of Christmas settled when it did based on calculations from Easter, or possibly a prophetic connection to Hanukkah. Yet any thematic interrelations betwixt Saturnalia, Christmas, and Hanukkah—or for that matter, the Nordic feast of Jul—have less to do with syncretism than with the fact that all of them are winter festivals. And in winter, we all want the same things: warmth amidst the cold, light amidst the dark, plenty amidst want, and joy in the face of fear.

Seasonal festivals tend to be more-or-less universal. They’re only pagan insofar as they are human, very much in synch with the natural seasons and shared Jungian archetypes.

For Christians, however, the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem of Judea isn’t just another winter feast; rather, Christmas is the consummation of them all! Christ is the fulness of our hope, the answer to our prayers, the promise of the Prophets fulfilled in ways more wondrous than we could imagine. And so we bring our gifts from every time, every tongue, every culture, every story: the Mexican poinsettia, the German Christmas tree, the French carols, the English authors, the Scandinavian rømmegrøt, the Celtic kissing-bough, anything and everything that brings us love and joy, we lay before the manger on that sacred Christmas morn.

Granted, we did let things get rather out of hand for a few centuries there. Christmas celebrations proved so raucous that not only were certain songs and decorations forbidden from our sanctuaries, but some magistrates even attempted to outlaw Christmas altogether. That might sound ridiculous—for what sort of stick-in-the-mud would seek to outlaw Christmas—but for them it was a season of drunken debauchery, when masked mummers carolled door to door demanding food and drink from their betters under the threat of vandalism. Best have some figgy pudding on hand.

It was the Victorians who domesticated the holiday, who made it more about children, about family, about Christian charity. They created the Christmas that we know and love today, with the help of Charles Dickens, Washington Irving, and good old Clement Moore. Prince Albert and Queen Victoria took the Christmas tree from an obscure Germanic tradition to an Empire-wide icon. Passion plays for the Twelve Days set the literal stage for our classic Christmas movies.

Christmastide at our household is a shameless hodgepodge of every odd tradition we could think of, from the Slavic Christmas spider through British bayberry candles to glass pickle ornaments pointing the way to marzipan pigs. And I love what a glorious mess it all is. With the birth of Christ, the Second Adam; with the Atonement wrought by His life, death, and Resurrection; we return again to innocence, to Eden, to the golden age of God. In the words of Catullus, it truly remains “the best of days.”

However you celebrate, whatever you love, whencever your family hails, Christ has come for you. He has come for us all: for every lost and wayward child, each iota of Creation. And the way that we share our gifts with Him is to share them with one another. Give, sing, dance, laugh, play, relax, and feast! Eat, drink, and be merry, for Christ is born of Mary. And always remember to open your hand to the Christchild in your neighbor. Thus are all our pagan hopes and dreams forever fulfilled.

I find it appropriate, then, to leave you with perhaps my favorite Christmas poem: “A Child of the Snows,” by G.K. Chesterton.

There is heard a hymn when the panes are dim,

And never before or again,

When the nights are strong with a darkness long,

And the dark is alive with rain.

Never we know but in sleet and in snow,

The place where the great fires are,

That the midst of the earth is a raging mirth

And the heart of the earth a star.

And at night we win to the ancient inn

Where the child in the frost is furled,

We follow the feet where all souls meet

At the inn at the end of the world.

The gods lie dead where the leaves lie red,

For the flame of the sun is flown,

The gods lie cold where the leaves lie gold,

And a Child comes forth alone.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pertinent Links

RDG Stout

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St Peter’s Lutheran

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Nidaros Lutheran

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