![]() ![]() Starting at the Town Hall at 7pm alongside the spectacle of the Winters Watch the Roman Deva Victrix 20th Legion will take back control of their city as Chester Roman Tours celebrates Saturnalia which was the Roman commemoration feast dedicated of the temple of the god Saturn. Image: A miniature illumination from a French fourteenth century book depicting a Fête de Fous (Feast of Fools) scene.The Winter Watch parade joins forces with the Roman Saturnalia parade taking the city from the 1400's back to its Roman occupation in 47/48 AD. The Romans understood this, our medieval ancestors understood this. Out of that chaos is born the new year, and order returns along with the return to ordinary time after Christmas. The old year is dying, disintegrating into chaos. So from whence comes all this chaos? One of the most beautiful things about the Twelve Days of Christmas is a mathematical thing: Half of those twelve days fall in the old year, half in the new. It was often the person who found a coin in his pudding who was elected lord of the revels. The practice of baking a coin in a pudding or a charm in a cake also harkens back to these ancient celebrations. The mummers and morris dancers, guised in ribbons and bells and strange costumes, are direct descendants of the Lord of Misrule. The mummer’s plays and morris dancers are mostly an English phenomenon, but mummer’s plays are also popular in Philadelphia at the new year. Some remnants you might find from the Feast of Fools, however, are the mummer’s plays and morris dancers that make their rounds in villages at this time of year. We are not a people given to chaos, when you get right down to it. Individuals spent the day drinking, gambling (normally discouraged in Rome’s strict society), singing, and feasting. Not much of this aspect of Christmas survives today. Households elected a King of the Saturnalia (also known the Lord of Misrule in modern times) who was tasked with causing mischief and creating chaos, usually by yelling commands that other partygoers had to obey. The Lord of Misrule reigns until Twelfth Night, as Christmas comes to a close. His charge, actually, was to act as foolishly as possible. He might be a servant in ordinary time, but now, during Christmastide, he was lord of the revelry and he reigned without fear of retribution. Much like the election of the Boy Bishop that we discussed in yesterday’s chapter of the Book of Days, the Lord of Misrule was usually someone who would not typically be in a position of power. It was the Lord of Misrule who was elected to reign over the Christmas revelry. The chaos of Saturnalia became the Feast of Fools, and it continued on with great conviviality through the medieval period, which was, perhaps, its heyday. ![]() As Rome became Christianized, celebrations that proved difficult for the Church to subvert just became Christianized and so the birth of Christ was assigned to the winter solstice and Saturnalia, with all of its festivity and gift-giving, became Christmas. Lord of Misrule, also called Abbot Of Misrule, or King Of Misrule, official of the late medieval and early Tudor period in England, who was specially appointed to manage the Christmas festivities held at court, in the houses of great noblemen, in the law schools of the Inns of Court, and in many of the colleges at the. ![]() It was a time for disguises and games and in that ceremonial reversal of the normal order, slaves were waited upon by their masters, mock kings were crowned, and general chaos ruled the land. In ancient Rome, from 17 to 23 December (in the Julian calendar), a man chosen to be a mock king was appointed for the feast of Saturnalia, in the guise of the Roman deity Saturn at the end of the festival, the man was sacrificed. A big part of Saturnalia was the abandonment of the rules that the Romans loved so dearly. Lord of Misrule comes from a similar custom practised during the Roman celebration of Saturnalia. It goes back to the feast that is probably at the heart of most of our Christmas customs: the Roman Saturnalia, a winter solstice celebration that predates Christmas by many centuries and that spread throughout Europe with the Roman empire. Here we have a Christmas custom that is rarely practiced today (though perhaps should be) and one that is definitely pagan in nature, this is a custom that goes back much further than the birth of Christ. ![]() Tradition calls for the ceremonial reversal today of the normal order of things. ![]()
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