Long-term readers of this blog will recall that I don't have much time for Christmas. Too much hypocrisy, sentimentality and humbug in my view! Not to mention the many lonely, unhappy, and destitute people out there who will enjoy no Xmas at all while their brethren make themselves ill through over-excess.
For therapists like me Christmas is usually a busy period. The statistics show that more people get depressed, stressed and suicidal than at any other time of the year. There will also be a steep rise in the figures for couples getting separated or divorced. For that reason I can expect to be busy right up until the end of January, as soon as the celebrations peter out.
If you do get stressed at Xmas then you can read my previous articles on Xmas right here.
There is also more recent advice on what to do about Stress in my November article on Stress here.
When the Christian Church achieved power within the Roman Empire in the 4th Century they sought to win some of the pagans over with the claim that Christ's birthday was on December 25th - just after the Saturnalia (but there are good reasons for thinking that Christ was actually born in September). The Christian writers did the same thing later on in Northern Europe by claiming that Christmas was the same festival as the one celebrated by the Anglo-Saxons, Danes and Germans at Yuletide.
During the original three-day Saturnalia people gave presents to each other, threw parties, were sexually promiscuous, and drank and ate as much as they could.
The reason for that was that the Romans were trying to honour the personal genius of the god Saturn.
Saturn was the god of order, structure, work, routine and duration. But he was also the god of sudden, violent, irreversible, change - when the time had come to put an end to the old order of things. He was also the god of Fate. More than any of the other gods, the Romans feared him.
To humour him the Romans turned everything on its head. Gambling, drunkenness and fornication in public places (usually forbidden) were allowed. Schools, law-courts and government offices were closed. Slaves were allowed to do what they wanted and, even more interesting, one slave was elected in every home to be the 'Lord of Misrule', with the power to make everyone, including his masters, do as he told them.
One of the things the Romans were attempting to achieve during the Saturnalia was freedom from the stifling internal control freakery of Headmind. In other words: a holiday from the tedious slavery to rules and conventions that so many of us carry around with us.
Seems to me a good idea, that.
