Bonus article: Why American Holidays Suck

How the ancient festival of Saturnalia was so much better than modern Christmas traditions, and some ideas for how we can get them back.

It is an unfortunate thing that Saturnalia has become cognate with Christmas in the modern zeitgeist. Pedants often bring up the Church’s moving around of dates to coincide with this celebration, but it carries an implication that our modern holiday had something to do with their ancient one. In truth, today’s Catholic church is made up in large part of “Chreasters,” people who celebrate two holidays a year. As for secular/state holidays, employers have become stingy with their days off. The Roman fasti¹ contained at least 3 days where no work was allowed to be carried out at minimum (after the Kalends, Nones, and Ides), in addition to regular festivals once or twice a week. These festivals were done in honor of all manner of gods, deified men, and military leaders in the Roman world. Gift-giving among friends was a popular tradition during Saturnalia, but the festival of Caristia in February was meant to show appreciation towards family members through gifts. Additionally the practice of bosses giving a “Christmas bonus” around the holidays finds its roots in the sigillaricium, a small amount of money given to slaves and liberti to buy small gifts for their families. Moreover, the bosses would often reverse roles with their servants and slaves during the holidays. This was a fun exchange of power for both parties: one got a day off, while the other was able to do some character-building and gain a true appreciation for the work that his people were doing for him. Celebrations like these are dissimilar to Christian traditions, and wholly foreign to our consumer-centric holiday.

How do we take back the holidays from Coca-Cola and Macy’s? One pizzeria in Ohio allowed its workers to split the company’s profits for a day to show appreciation during the pandemic. I’ve even heard of active practitioners of Roman festivals allowing their employees to take over important business meetings and deals while they’re stuck in the office. A tradition that one of my dad’s college roommates practices every year is to send out bottles of maple syrup from his farm to our family.² Each of these represents an aspect of one tradition that is more fun to celebrate and less consumerist than White Elephant parties or Secret Santa.³ The first was done without any specific ritual or reasoning, just a nice gesture that one store-owner showed to his staff. If someone like Jeff Bezos, who makes $205m a day, did this for his 1.5 million employees, it would go a long way towards repairing his reputation (considering the deaths of those factory workers who were caught in the storm are on his hands). That doesn’t even count towards what upper management and warehouse managers could also give per employee.

When I was young, “thank you” cards were enforced rigorously in my household for Christmas and birthday presents, because of how infrequently we got to see some relatives that sent gifts. As a child of the digital age I did not see the value in this: a phone call was just as sufficient in my eyes as thanks. Now that I have grown, my perspective on letter writing has changed, and having written proof of appreciation can go a long way for mental health. I am aware that the USPS is in dire straits right now, and has been since the Bush-era push for privatization, but it would be nice if they gave out free stamps to be used on that specific holiday for the purpose of sending such letters.⁴ In turn this may indirectly give people a greater sense of necessity for the mail service and protect it from further budget cuts.

This country needs a calendar reform: not to balance and codify the year, but instead to create holidays that are celebrated in some other way than going out and buying one of six different kinds of things that neither the giver nor the recipient have no real emotional connection to. Even something like an informally enforced Talk Like A Pirate Day, with accompanying festivities would be more interesting than handing out a quarter’s worth of candy to a dozen neighborhood kids.⁵

1. Side-note: this word sucks because the Latin words fas, fastus, and festum are all close in meaning, close in spelling, but are declined 3 different ways and it’s kind of a pain in the ass to remember which is which.

2. Naturally, not everyone has acres of trees to farm from, but I used to make mead in my dorm and give it out in mason jars. I don’t think it would have to be anything big, just small crafts that show people what your hobbies are would be nice for a holiday.

3. Stop doing these! Few people have any sort of enjoyment of the gifts they get because the current system makes people think that if they get out less than they put in, they have somehow been screwed out of their money. It’s not fun and in particular cases, it can cause quiet, irrational resentment. Most people would appreciate spending the day off with their families instead anyway.

4. I’m just spit-balling here, but I would be happier if a smaller percentage of my mail was bills.

5. Please do not do this, a lot of people would be incredibly annoyed if this ever happened. The point is that companies should not have a stranglehold on how we celebrate holidays going forward