{"id":3646,"date":"2011-12-30T18:00:34","date_gmt":"2011-12-31T01:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3646"},"modified":"2011-12-30T09:51:43","modified_gmt":"2011-12-30T16:51:43","slug":"why-is-saturncronus-in-saturnalia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3646","title":{"rendered":"Why is Saturn\/Cronus in Saturnalia?"},"content":{"rendered":"

At this time of year, when the popular press runs articles on Christmas customs, a few rhetorical bases are always touched. The Christmas tree is a “Pagan survival,” that sort of thing. And that Christmas bears some relationship to the Roman celebration of Saturnalia.<\/p>\n

At Religion Nerd<\/em>, Louis A. Ruprecht, Jr., goes more deeply into the origins of Saturnalia in a post titled, “A Further Note on Cronus and Chronos<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Greek and Roman religions were religions without canonical scriptures; their mythology is notoriously complex and, to modern eyes, often contradictory. \u00a0It is important to add that this does not mean that there was no religious writing in the ancient world; just the opposite, in fact. There was an excess<\/em> of religious writing. \u00a0And of religious images, as well. There is so much writing from the ancient world about the gods, in fact, spanning so many centuries, that it is well-nigh impossible to make systematic sense of it all.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I came away thinking that a lot of what we think we know came from a couple of well-known Roman writers, such as Virgil. As usual, first came the\u00a0 festival and then came the religio-literary explanation of what it all meant<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At this time of year, when the popular press runs articles on Christmas customs, a few rhetorical bases are always touched. The Christmas tree is a “Pagan survival,” that sort of thing. And that Christmas bears some relationship to the Roman celebration of Saturnalia. At Religion Nerd, Louis A. Ruprecht, Jr., goes more deeply into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[33,5,56],"class_list":["post-3646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-greece","tag-paganism","tag-rome"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-WO","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6935,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6935","url_meta":{"origin":3646,"position":0},"title":"Saturnalia with the Romans","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 21, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"We are in the midst of Saturnalia, so consider this article by Classics scholar Mary Beard on \"Five Things the Romans Did at Christmas.\" The headline was just to grab you, because she begins, \"OK, the Romans didn\u2019t actually have Christmas. And even Christian Romans didn\u2019t celebrate Jesus\u2019 birthday on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Rome\"","block_context":{"text":"Rome","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=rome"},"img":{"alt_text":"io-saturnalia","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/io-saturnalia.gif?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10107,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10107","url_meta":{"origin":3646,"position":1},"title":"Io Saturnalia!","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 16, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"","rel":"","context":"In \"humor\"","block_context":{"text":"humor","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=humor"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/starbucks-io-saturnalia.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/starbucks-io-saturnalia.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/starbucks-io-saturnalia.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/starbucks-io-saturnalia.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4911,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4911","url_meta":{"origin":3646,"position":2},"title":"Revising the Story of Christmas","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 30, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"It is an article of faith (an appropriate word here) for contemporary Pagans that Christianity stole holidays left and right from our spiritual ancestors, particularly Christmas. Here Mollie Ziegler at Get Religion, a blog about the critical examination of religion-writing in the (mostly) American media, gets into some of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1274,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1274","url_meta":{"origin":3646,"position":3},"title":"IO SATVRNALIA","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 24, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Return of the Sun, miraculous menorahs (officially over, yes), Baby Jesus\u2014it's all good.Did you make your reservation at Kentucky Fried Chicken yet?And Io, Saturnalia!(graphic lifted from another Pagan blogger)","rel":"","context":"In \"Yule\"","block_context":{"text":"Yule","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=yule"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chasclifton.com\/uploaded_images\/saturnalia-766380.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2640,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2640","url_meta":{"origin":3646,"position":4},"title":"Quick Review: Caesar’s Druids","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 12, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I am a little more than halfway through Miranda Aldhouse-Green's Caesar's Druids: Story of An Ancient Priesthood. As the British archaeologist Stuart Piggott pointed out back in the 1960s, there are no texts written about Druids by Druids. The sum of what ancient writers of the Greco-Roman world wrote would\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"Cover image of Casar's Druids by Miranda Aldhouse-Green","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/51AAWVY--yL._AA160_.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8340,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8340","url_meta":{"origin":3646,"position":5},"title":"Thoughts on Pagan Studies after the 2016 AAR Meeting (1)","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 26, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"From the 15th through the 23rd, I was either on the road or attending the annual joint meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature.((Despite its name, it does offer occasional sessions that touch on ancient Pagan religions in the Roman empire.)) I refer to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3646"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3648,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3646\/revisions\/3648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}