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RSSChristmas Used To Be A Giant Orgy
Christmas can be a stressful, especially when you’re running out of time to get your shopping done. It wasn’t always like that, though. In the Roman Empire, Christmas was more of an annual ten day Woodstock festival.
According to Wikipedia:
Saturnalia, the 12-day Roman feast devoted to Saturnus, god of the harvest, started on December 17th was indeed an orgy of gift-giving, overeating, and raucous baby-making. It peaked around December 25th with Dies solis invicti nati, the Day of the Birth of the Unconquered Sun.
Kissing under the mistletoe seems innocent enough until you know a bit more. In accounts written by Pliny, the Roman historian, the Celts in Northern Europe held week-long rituals during the winter solstice in an effort to convince the sun to be re-born. They feasted, drank mead laced with mistletoe (their sacred plant), and then engaged in wild sex orgies. (The white mistletoe berries were considered to be drops of semen belonging to the spirit of the revered oak tree.) Today, all that’s left is the kissing ritual, a watered down version of Celtic foreplay.
Now, the best we hope for is the excitement of an iPod.
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