Hello and welcome to the third part of this series.
In part 1 we spoke about the birthdate of Jesus. And on part we saw the “everything was paganised by Constantine” narrative.
You can read them here:
@maxjoy/is-christmas-a-pagan-celebration
@maxjoy/is-christmas-a-pagan-celebration-part-2
Today, we’re looking at the Saturnalia controversy, that it goes something like this: When Constantine merged Christianity with Paganism for political power, he took Saturnalia, and made Christmas out of it. That’s why you have the sunday, because it’s all a scam to have us worshiping the sun.
Well, as we've seen this Constantine myth is not rooted on reality nor serious history, not religious nor secular. But rather in presuppositions that inundate the culture for some reason.
What was saturnalia? In short, it could not be further part from Christmas. It was an invention of reality. The rich would act as poor, the slaves would be mock emperors and so on… It would last for a week to two. It was a time of anti Christian behaviour. Orgies would happen all over the place. It was basically like the movie “the purge” basically an inversion of everything, drunkness non stop for all of the time. In short a very anti Christian behaviour. And for sure not a Christ Mass, the mass for Christ.
"Oh, but there where hats"… yeah, great point. Wish I was joking, but some people where hats (some red) is actually one of the points people use to connect it with Christmas. I won’t even say anything else for this one.
"Oh, but it was at the same time as Christmas"… Well, not really. First of all, it would take place for days if not weeks. And the 25 of December had nothing to do with it. It’s a feast in December. That’s the actual connection it has.
"Oh, but come on…. it’s the sun worship, everyone knows that”… As the name suggests Saturnalia, is about the planet Saturn. Saturn was the big patron of Rome. And sun worship wasn’t that big. In fact there was a peculiar emperor in the AD. era called “Heliogabalus,”
He was a bizarre emperor, even for Ancient Roman standards. He was one of the few foreign emperor. Meaning he was from an eastern province. Bizarre, behaviour all around. But one thing he did, that Romans really didn’t like was the establishment of worshiping of the sun, around 222 AD. He also made a temple for “ball” and brought a black rock that people also had to kiss and so on… Funny that this reminds me a bit of the black rock in Mecca, yet I don’t see 30 thousand books and so on… trying to say that the traditions of the religion in question are all pagan.
This last point, really illustrates this pagan Christmas, narrative. It’s like people try and gather every possible angle, of every possible thin similarity and try to explain it like that. Like it’s sun worshiping and saturnalia. Well… saturnalia, has nothing to do with the sun. So immediately it goes out the window.
But people still hang on to it. “oh, but they exchanged gifts”… again, great point, case closed. No one ever gifted anything before… Again, it’s trying to get anything, from everything to make a point. Our society has placed more importance on the gifts than before, but still let’s have a look at it.
Gifts where not an internal part of saturnalia at all. Some people, could exchange tiny effigies of people, like tiny toys let's say. Minor part, in the middle of intense and long madness. And we can’t be sure, because even the beginning of saturnalia is not 100% clear. But there is some evidence to suggest that the “toys” where used as a symbol, to replace the human sacrifice that used to take place in the celebration.
Next time we will look at other paganism things, such has Nordic folklore and modern society. Probably it will be the last entry of the series.
All photos from Pexels.com