Saturnalia

[Xantippe Helia Allegra]

Salvete,


Will someone please post anything/everything about this holiday...its history, good sources for rituals, blessings, etc...the time grows near and I would like to be prepared!

Piscine?


Valete optime,
Allegra

[Horatius Piscinus]

Salva sis Allegra

Saturnalia is nearly upon us? Saturnalia is 17 Dec, so today...

IO SATURNALIA!

First a little of the dry stuff.

In a strictly religious sense, Saturnalia was only the first day, but grew into a series of festivities over three days, and some extended it to seven days (Mac 1.c; Cic. Ad Att. 13.52). Before Caesar adjusted the calendar, it fell on XIV KAL IAN or 19 Dec, which Macrobius said was the day some still began their festivities (1.10.2) so may be you have two days to go yet. But then whose calendar are you using? According to Columella (11.2.94), the proper date is when the sun first enters Capricornus, and then should end at Winter solstice.

Too late now to go into history and all, you have a little one tugging at you, so on to festivities. The public festivities began with a sacrifice and public feast held at the altar in front of the Temple of Saturn in the Forum. The feast was conducted as a lectisternium, that is with images of Saturn and His associated deities carried out of the temple on couches to share in the convivium. While togae was worn for the sacrifice, these were set aside for the convivium. It was while leaving this feast that attendees would shout to one another IO SATURNALIA! [Livy held that the lectisternium and convivium was introduced only in 217 bce: 22.1.19.]

"Come dawn tomorrow, you shall pamper your dear soul with wine and suckling pig, while master and slave enjoy the day off." [Horace Odes III.17] On 18 and 19 Dec the day began with an early trip to the baths, then the family sacrifice of suckling pig with its attendent feast. Here roles were reversed, with servants and slaves seated and treated in all respects as equals, and the masters of the house serving. [Macr. Saturnalia 1.7.37]

This was followed by visits to the houses of friends, with more celebrating with wine and food, probably why the festival was extended to last over a period of days. Feasting, games, and the giving of all manner of presents was carried on throughout the period. Gifts especially associated with Saturnalia were candles and sigillaria. The sigillaria were little images made of paste or earthenware. They were something similar to gingerbread men, or decorations made with flour dough. There was a general exchange of gifts between friends at this time, special little things that each might want. Martial is filled with references to Saturnalia and some of the cherished gifts I think he mentions are stationary (or maybe it was Catullus who mentions the stationary).

Of course the work of Macrobius, called the Saturnalia, is intended to represent the festivities shared among friends. This is a feast where friends enjoyed discussions on an assortment of topics. Macrobius has his guests telling a number of humorous tales and jokes, as well as topics like astronomy/astrology, moving from one topic to the next throughout the night. Then when the party broke up, they might just go on to the next friend's house to continue the holiday. I think this perhaps is what made Saturnalia unique and so popular, because it was one where in its popular expression the holiday was celebrated among one's closest friends.

Saturnalia is to remind us of that Golden Age when all were equal and lived together in friendship while the gods still walked among us and shared in our friendship.

Di deaeque te semper ament. Vale optime
Moravius Piscinus

[Horatius Piscinus]

Salvete omnes

IO SATURNALIA !!!

What I remember most of our winter holidays was all the food, joining with family and friends for long talks over wine and cookies. Here's some recipes I make up for Saturnalia

Rum Balls
These are not baked but have to ferment for three months.

Crumbled vanilla wafers (2 packages); pinch of salt, 6 Tbspns light corn syrup; 1 cup rum; 8 Tbspns cocoa; 1 stick of butter; 1 cup of chopped nuts.

Mix all the ingredients together. form balls, and roll these in confectioner's sugar. Then store for three months in a tin, in some cool dark place. Then roll in confectioner's sugar again before serving.

Don't quite understand the American measuring system? Europeans can try this one.

Ischler Tortes

300 gr flour (2 cups); 100 gr finely ground almonds (3 1/2 oz); 125 gr confectioner's sugar (1 cup); 1 package of vanilla sugar (roughly a tspn); 225 gr unsalted butter (slightly less than a cup); pinch of salt.

Topping: 60 gr confectioner's sugar and 1 package of vanilla sugar.

Filling: Raspberry marmalade.

Mix ingredients like bread in a mixer. Refrigerate for 30 minutes. Roll dough out thin, 3 mm. Cut out two different forms. The bottom is a circle or heart shape. The top is the same shape and size, but with a center cut out. Bake 8 minutes at 150C=350F. Dip the top parts in topping. Spread raspberry marmalade on the bottom parts, then put together like sandwich cookies. Makes about 44 cookies.


Hercules' Knot
This is a pizzelli dough. We made our own pizzelli from it in our irons, or else used the recipe for cut out cookies, or else formed the cookies into different shapes and decorated them with a sugar glaze and sprinkled candies. The shapes we formed were of two kinds, phallics for the season, and a braided Hercules knot [if you are familiar with Egyptian hieroglyphs they look like the letter "H"] to represent the female womb. Glazed and decorated, we would serve them with coffee; ungalzed were served with wine in which to dip them.

1 cup olive oil; 1 cup sugar; 5 eggs; 1/2 tspn vanilla extract; 1 tspn anise flavoring; 1 tspn anise seeds; 1 tspn baking powder; 5 cups flour.

Mix the ingredients. Roll out thin strands about the length of a hand, then bend over to form a loop and braid. Bake for 10 minutes at 350F=150C. The glaze is just confectioner's sugar and milk, with some food colouring perhaps, and then sprinkle with baker's candies.


Wine Crescents

Dough: 5 cups flour, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup wine, 1 cup oil.

Filling: boiled grape jelly, chopped walnuts, 1 orange peel grated.

Topping: wine, sugar.

First the ingredients for the dough are mixed together and worked. The dough is rolled out thin, then cut into circles using a wineglass. The jelly is boiled down into a soupy consistency, to which coarsely chopped walnuts and the grated orange peel is added, in order to make the filling. Place a dollop of filling onto a circle of dough, then fold over and press the edges together with a fork. Be sure to seal the edges well so that the filling will not seep out while baking. Bake on an oiled cookie sheet at 350 F =180 C for about 15 minutes, trying not to burn the bottoms. Remove from the oven and while still hot sprinkle the cookies with wine, then liberally sprinkle with sugar.


Biscotti
Biscotti means simply "cookie" but in the US has come to mean the variety of Italian cookies commonly found in coffee houses. There is a variety of these, and so I will give a couple recipes here.

Vanilla Almond Biscotti: 2 cups flour; 1 tspn baking powder; 1/4 tspn salt; 2 eggs; 1 tspn vanilla extract; 1/2 cup slivered almonds.

Anise Lemon Biscotti: 2 cups flour; 1 tspn baking powder; 1 cup sugar; 1/4 tspn salt; 2 eggs; 1 egg white; 2 Tbspn grated lemon peel; 1 Tbspn anise seed; and/or 1 Tbspn anise flavoring.

Directions for both are the same. Sift together the dry ingredients, add beaten eggs (and egg white), then stir in the remaining ingredients. Form into two logs on an oiled baking sheet. Bake at 350F=150C for twenty-25 minutes. Remove, rack, and cool for 15 minutes. Reduce oven heat to 325F. Cut the loaves diagonally, then place the cut side down on a baking sheet and bake for another 10-15 minutes. [Don't over bake or they will get to be too hard. They are meant to be dipped in coffee so they should be somewhat hard when done.] After they have cooled you can dip them partially into melted semisweet dark chocolate, then place in a refrigerator for the chocolate to cool and harden.


Chocolate Sambuca Crinkles

1 1/4 cup flour; 1 Tbspn baking powder; 1/2 tspn salt; 12 oz. chopped bittersweet chocolate; 1/2 stick unsalted butter; 2 eggs; 1/2 cup coursely chopped walnuts; 1/2 cup sambuco; and 2 Tbspns sugar. Then confectioner's sugar for topping.

Shift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Melt chocolate with butter in a metal bowl over a simmering pan of water, stirring until smooth. Lightly whisk together the eggs, sambuco, sugar, and walnuts. Add in the flour, then the chocolate. Cover and chill in a refrigerator until firm, about 2 hours. Preheat oven to 350F=150C. Form dough into balls. Roll in confectioner's sugar. Place on two lightly buttered cookie sheets. Bake in the top and bottom thirds of the oven, switching positions of the cookie sheets half way through baking. Bake 10-12 minutes until puffed, cracked, but with the centers still soft.


Panettore
Panettore is a sweet Italian bread, made with chopped hazel nuts and candied fruit, it is traditionally served during the winter holidays. The recipe given here uses only white raisins after the kind of bread we served for our spring festivities.

3 ½ cups flour, 4 tbs. Sugar, ½ tsp. Salt, 1 tsp. Nutmeg, 1 egg, 4 egg yolks, 1 cup milk, ¼ cup melted oleo, 2 pkgs. yeast, and white raisins.

Topping: 1 tbs. flour, 1 tbs. sugar, 1 tbs. oleo, 1 tbs. vanilla extract.

In a small bowl mix ½ cup of milk and 2 tbs. Sugar, then add 2 packages of yeast and allow to ferment. Mix the remaining ½ cup milk with the melted oleo. Sift together the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl place one whole egg and 4 egg whites, reserving the yolks for later. Stir the eggs together in order to break the one egg yolk but not so much as to whip the egg whites. Add the milk mixtures and eggs to the dry ingredients and work into a dough. Place the dough into oiled coffee cans, about half full. Bake at 350 F =180 C for 20 minutes. Meanwhile mix together the ingredients for the topping. After the bread has been baking for 20 minutes, remove from the oven, brush with the reserved egg yolks and top thickly with the topping. The topping will melt and drip down the sides. Place the tins back into the oven and continue baking, to a total baking time of one hour, until the crust turns dark brown and begins to separate from the tin, but not so long as to burn the topping.



Frappe is a deep fried Italian pastry.

2 cups flour, ½ cup sugar, 2 tbs. unsalted butter cut into ½" bits and chilled, 3 eggs, 1 tsp. vanilla extract, 3 tbs. dry Marsala wine, oil and confectioner?s sugar.

Blend the flour, sugar and butter. Blend in one egg at a time, then add the vanilla and wine and beat. Work the dough briefly, then roll out. Cut the dough into diamond shapes, or 8" strips tied in a loose knot, or into 4"x3" rectangles with three slits cut into them. Deep fry in hot vegetable oil, drain and dust with confectioner?s sugar. Serve with wine in which to dip the frappe.

Valete optime

Moravius Piscinus

[Horatius Piscinus]

Salva sis Allegra

Over the past three years, since I first ventured onto the net, I have been asked all kinds of questions about Saturnalia. How to celebrate Saturnalia and still retain what you remember of Christmas as children? How to deal with your own children today? So allow me to assume some of your questions and offer a little from my experience.

How to deal with children in your new found faith in the Religio Romana? Have fun. What else is this season about? Friends visiting, baking, decorating, dancing, singing, gift giving, story telling. Including children in all that just makes it all the more fun.

With my own sons I began Saturnalia by telling them to leave their shoes outside the front door on the night of 16 Dec. Beethovan's Birthday, Saturnalia Eve. The next day they would find candy stuffed in their shoes, left by Fata Da Brutta. As a child I did not have a Santa Claus, instead we had Fata Da Brutta. Fata Da Brutta is a kindly witch, or Queen of the Fairies if you like. A tradition of southern Italy. She is sometimes called Fata Morgana, which in English is Morgan Le Fey. Rita being Christian, the boys also got to enjoy Santa Claus, but it sort of made them happy to know their festivities began before the other children at school. Throughout 17-25 Dec they would find little treats of cookies and candies or some little gifts, hidden away in unexpected places, left by the folletti.

Normally I had the boys assist a little with the folletti outdoors throughout the year. Only during Saturnalia were the folletti allowed in the house to keep warm. And Rita, who thought I was nuts when we first met, soon enough came around to appreciate the folletti. Whenever something would come up missing, like her tape and scissors while wrapping presents, she would blame it on the tape goblin, curse him and tell him to give it back. And we would leave out treats for the folletti every night, the boys always pleased to see they were eaten by next morning. Saturnalia is a magical time of year, not just for one night with one fat red elf but for the whole season with the folletti living with us. So we really played it up for the boys that magic was in our house.

For yourself, assuming you have converted from Christianity, this is an answer I recently gave to another query:
The simple answer is to hold on to your childhood memories, incorporating everything you most enjoyed as a child, for what you do, or how you do it, does not matter so much as the feelings it instills in you. Saturnalia is not Christmas, but enough was taken from pagan traditions that I don't think it matters should you incorporate some of your childhood Christmas memories into your present practices. If someone came from a Christian background, then honoring family traditions and childhood memories serves best to bring out the feeling of Saturnalia, and into that you then add other things, building up your pagan tradition over the years...If you have Christian Lares in your family then play them a Christmas song and enjoy. Exclusiveness is not part of pagan practices

Many people cannot enjoy this season without a tree. In my family, I do not put up a pine of Attys. I put up pine and holly garlands along my archways, and wreaths on my doors and walls. There are glass teardrop baubles, and tingling windchimes, with holiday lights, and candles, and all sorts of goodies I have baked over the preceding months. Actually, my archways have been decorated all year like that, it is only this time of year that other people do not take it to be odd. And to that Rita adds in her Christmas decorations.

With regard to riites, Rita does not participate in my rites (sometimes but not too often) and I do not attend her church (except for family functions). My rites are centered around my lararium at this time, perhaps more so than at other times of the year, because I am not outdoors as much. The lararium's edifice is decorated for the season, with additional offerings from everything else I would be baking up at this time of year, and special liqueurs I would have now, and maybe some special gifts for departed family members. Throughout the rest of the house, at the various shrines I would have, it is much the same. Not particularly special rites, but a seasonal flavor to my rites. A special rite is made on the night of the winter solstice, with prayers and offerings given to the Lares and Penates in thanks for the previous year. Then again in the week that follows, before New Year's, a prosperity rite is held, with one white candle lit throughout the night on the dining room table, and seven piles of vervain, inside a circle of mola salsa, where offerings of sweets and coins are placed. And whenever the Full Moon falls in this season there are offerings left at outdoor shrines for the Manes.

Mostly what we did in the family as a child, and then later with my own family, was spend the season in several parties. We always began the first Sunday of Saturnalia by visiting my grandfather for "breakfast." A misnomer as his breakfast was enough to keep anyone for a week, with roast chicken, roast beef, Italian sausages, ham, roasted potatoes and garlic, pasta, and everything else that goes with it. Over the week we would then visit my grandmother, who always served eel. In my house I would make calimari just to see the boys' eyes agog, and to see Rita's icky face as I prepared it. And there were visits to other family members as well, but things were capped off by a dinner for friends at my mother's. Tradition had it that this meal should serve seven courses of seafood. Linguini in clam sauce, baked fish and steamed mussels, scallops in pesto, calimari either deep fried, in marinara sauce on spaghetti, or grilled on skewers with shrimp, stuffed clams, crab, and fried smelt, and to that we would also serve other entrees. Each party was a feast. At each we exchanged gifts. And this we did over the course of the last two weeks of December.

Oh, if you want recipes for some of those dishes, I can post them too.

Anyway, Saturnalia is a time of celebrating family and friends with laughter and cheer. Wine by the fire, and all good feelings of warmth to you and yours.

IO SATURNALIA!

Di deaeque te semper ament.
Moravius Piscinus

[Xantippe Helia Allegra]

Salve Piscine,

Thank you for sharing your knowledge, insights, and personal stories regarding this festive and exciting time of year...I knew that the Saturnalia occured near/during the Winter solstice and was a time for celebration and feasting where servant and master reverse roles and celebrate as equals, but had no idea of its wide popularity nor its tradition of gift-giving as a time for family and friends...(makes perfect sense). I warmly welcome this "new" old tradition into my life, as I am burned out on the over-commercialization and rampant consumerism of the Christmas holiday (as a non-Christian who grew up surrounded by Southern Baptists, I always welcome the celebration of other Yule-time holidays ).
I appreciate your willingness to expound on the subject and share some of your family's practices.
The recipes sound delicious...I am more of a cook than a baker, but since anise is one of David's favorite spices, I will give them a try.

(On a side note, your family's magical adventures with the folletti remind me of an indie film from New Zealand called "The Price of Milk", which I think you would enjoy very much...a modern fairy tale that takes place in the rolling hills of New Zealand's countryside, with a gorgeous score and a soundtrack that features works by Russian composers Rachmananoff, Rimsky-Korsakoff, and Liadove.)

One related topic that we should take up sometime, either here or in the Col VitaQuo, is the challenge of raising children to respect the ways of the Religio while living in a mostly-Christian society. This year, Tristan is still too young to discern which traditions are Christian and which are Roman, but in a few years, I am sure he will have many questions.

Blessings and joy to you and your family, mi Piscine!


Di te semper ament,
Allegra




IO SATURNALIA!