In the present day is Saturnalia, an historic Roman vacation with a protracted custom right here on the Volokh Conspiracy. Admittedly, it is custom solely in as far as I’ve put up a put up about it nearly each December 17 since 2006. However, by web requirements, that is a very historic custom, certainly!
The Encyclopedia Romana has a useful description of Saturnalia:
Throughout the vacation, restrictions have been relaxed and the social order inverted. Playing was allowed in public. Slaves have been permitted to make use of cube and didn’t need to work. . . Throughout the household, a Lord of Misrule was chosen. Slaves have been handled as equals, allowed to put on their masters’ clothes, and be waited on at time for dinner in remembrance of an earlier golden age thought to have been ushered in by the god. Within the Saturnalia, Lucian relates that “Throughout My week the intense is barred; no enterprise allowed. Consuming, noise and video games and cube, appointing of kings and feasting of slaves, singing bare, clapping of frenzied fingers, an occasional ducking of corked faces in icy water—such are the features over which I preside.”
As in most years, we’ve got no scarcity of robust candidates for the place of Lord of Misrule. However the present occupant of the White Home has a very compelling declare to the title.
Blissful Saturnalia to all the chums, Romans, and Volokh Conspiracy readers on the market!
NOTE: Most of this put up is adopted from earlier Saturnalia posts.
