Although it’s impossible to be certain, it seems it is to these boughs that we owe the Christmas palette of today. Lavish feasts would be laid on at Saturn’s temples, most famously the Forum, which was also Rome’s state treasury where branches of dark green holly spiked with scarlet berries were used as decoration.
During Saturnalia, masters served their slaves at banquets, games of all kinds would be played and public chariot races held.
Saturnalia, according to the early fifth-century writer Macrobius, was a time when ‘all things serious are barred’, and it’s from this holiday that people have argued many Christmas traditions were taken. Saturn, an old Roman god of agriculture, was thought to have ruled over the world in a long-lost Golden Age of plenty and was celebrated with gusto throughout the empire in late December. The mid-winter date coinciding with winter solstice? Garlanding a tree with lights? Hanging up sprigs of mistletoe? The abundance of rich food and exchanging of gifts? And then, of course, there’s the holiday’s glossy green and red livery. The evidence may not be concrete, but it is compelling. Break Christmas down into its component parts and it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that early Christians did an awful lot of borrowing from older, pagan traditions.
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