Category: Through the past

A Celebration of Winter and the Divine While ancient Greece did not celebrate Christmas as we know it today, there were various winter festivals and religious observances that marked the season and held deep significance. Many of these celebrations revolved around the gods and the cycles of nature, particularly the return of the sun during…

The Ancient Roman Festival of Revelry and Reversal Saturnalia was one of the most famous and widely celebrated festivals of ancient Rome, known for its joyous spirit, indulgence, and role reversals. Held in honor of Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture, wealth, and time, Saturnalia was a time for merriment, feasting, and social subversion. It became…

The early Christian community distinguished between the identification of the date of Jesus’ birth and the liturgical celebration of that event. The actual observance of the day of Jesus’ birth was long in coming. In particular, during the first two centuries of Christianity there was strong opposition to recognizing birthdays of martyrs or, for that matter, of Jesus. Numerous Church Fathers…