noun
definition
A period or occasion of general license, in which the passions or vices have riotous indulgence; a period of unrestrained revelry.
Examples of saturnalia in a Sentence
He called it "the saturnalia, or excess of faith."
The Romans celebrated Saturnalia by decorating their houses with greens and lights and exchanging gifts.
The most important of his works is the Saturnalia, containing an account of the discussions held at the house of Vettius Praetextatus (c. 325-385) during the holiday of the Saturnalia.
The first book is devoted to an inquiry as to the origin of the Saturnalia and the festivals of Janus, which leads to a history and discussion of the Roman calendar, and to an attempt to derive all forms of worship from that of the sun.
Even the name of God is not once mentioned, perhaps from a dread of its profanation during the Saturnalia of Purim.
At Rome the scapegoat did not suffer death; but in the Saturnalia a human victim seems to have been slain till the 4th century A.D.
He is one of the interlocutors in the Saturnalia of Macrobius, and allusions in that work and a letter from Symmachus to Servius show that he was a pagan.
The form of the Saturnalia is copied from Plato's Symposium and Gellius's Nodes atticae; the chief authorities (whose names, however, are not quoted) are Gellius, Seneca the philosopher, Plutarch (Quaestiones conviviales), Athenaeus and the commentaries of Servius (excluded by some) and others on Virgil.
During this gala, known as Saturnalia, masters and slaves switched roles, children were out of school, and businesses shut down.
Coinciding with Brumalia was the Roman feast of Saturnalia, held on December 17.
People used to sing carols throughout the year, but as the celebration of Christ replaced the more pagan Saturnalia winter festivities, the popularity of carols centered on the new holiday.
The celebrations are directly traceable to the pagan Saturnalia of ancient Rome, which in spite of the conversion of the Empire to Christianity, and of the denunciation of bishops and ecclesiastical councils, continued to be celebrated by the people on the Kalends of January with all their old licence.
Ambrosius Macrobius Theodosius (c. 400) wrote a treatise on Cicero's Somnium Scipionis and seven books of miscellanies (Saturnalia); and Martianus Capella (c. 430), a native of Africa, published a compendium of the seven liberal arts, written in a mixture of prose and verse, with some literary pretensions.