'Little dolls, things like that.' People greeted each other with special holiday phrases. ' 'Io Saturnalia!' is Greek,' McDonough said. 'It was usually minor gifts, little gifts,' McDonough said. 17 to 23 would have been typical, though there were variations over time - that involved feasting, merry-making, and gift-giving. What's definitely true is that Saturnalia was a December festival - Dec. 'This idea that the Saturnalia was somehow baptized as a Christian festival just doesn't add up with the way the early church functioned.' Holiday time 'I don't buy the theory, largely because the early church was really strident about not being pagan, and not being accommodating of pagan ways,' Messner said. This scenario seems dubious to Roman historian Brian Messner, who teaches at Lincoln Christian University in Illinois. In the fourth century - so the story goes - the early church fathers deliberately re-branded a popular pagan holiday as a Christian festival, in order to make their religion more attractive to converts. No more gifts?: Stop buying holiday gifts, says activist and 'Reverend' of The Church of Stop ShoppingĬhristmas lights: The most spectacular holiday houses in North Jersey Holidays: Celebrate 'It's a Wonderful Life' and other classics with anniversaries this Christmas Historians argue about the exact relation between Saturnalia and Christmas - the holiday that, by many accounts, grew out of it. 'This was a festive season for the Romans, that was continued by the Christians in a sense,' said historian Scott McDonough, who teaches ancient history courses at William Paterson University in Wayne.

Io saturnalia