http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5060356
National Public Radio (NPR)
Weekend Edition Sunday
December 18, 2005 Sunday
Have a PC Holiday, Ancient Rome Style
The perennial question is upon us: Whether to wish someone a Merry
Christmas or a Happy Hanukkah or a good Kwanzaa, or take the generic
route and say `Seasons Greetings' or `Happy Holidays'? Essayist Diane
Roberts imagines that things haven't changed much since Rome ruled
the world.
DIANE ROBERTS:
What's this empire coming to? Now they want us to stop greeting
people with, `Io, Saturnalia.' `We have all these different cultures
in Rome,' they tell us. `We shouldn't offend anyone,' they tell us.
`We should be inclusive. We've got the barbarians from the north with
their tree decorations and their fire rituals, and the weirdos from
Gaul cutting mistletoe with a golden sickle, and the Mithraists,
the Zoroastrians, the Isis cults and, of course,those characters that
hang out in the catacombs.' `Hail, winter,' we're supposed to say. I
ask you, what next? We lose the feast? We stop the solstice parties?
No more honoring Ops, goddess of abundance?
I was buying some candles and greenery down by the Forum the other
day and there's old Macrobius with some Visigoth chick, and she goes,
`Good, yule.' So I go, `Hey, in this country, we say, "Io,
Saturnalia." Maybe you should go back from where you came from.' Then
Macrobias goes, `She can't; she's a slave.' Whatever. At this time of
year, the Visigoths sacrifice a pig and burn a special log which they
then dance around instead of acting like normal people and going to
the temple of Saturn.
I swear, I was at this party over at Septima Commodia's house the
other day--she always has a Saturnalia party--anyway, she decorated
the place with prickly green leaves. `It's holly,' she said, `the
latest fashion from Britannia. They all do it over in Londinium.'
It gets worse. She had this statue of some goddess from Ultima
Thule or somewhere--name of Frigga--sitting right there on the dining
room mensal. I mean, this is darn near blasphemous. I'd be scared of
what the Lares and Penates would do if I put that thing in my house.
But Septima Commidia just said, `Oh, get over it. We're cosmopolitan
around here.'
Cosmopolitan; that's what they call it. Well, by Jupiter, I live in
Latium, I'm a Roman and this empire was founded on the principle that
the gods, our gods, must be honored at the appropriate time and in
the appropriate way. None of this foreign heretical nonsense or these
strange customs from Germania or Hibernia or Palestine. I say, `Io,
Saturnalia,' and if you don't like it, you can leave.
HANSEN: Diane Roberts observes the holidays around her family's
seasonal shrub in Tallahassee, Florida.
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