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Article: SATURNALIA: Sub sole nihil novi.(Humor)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- December 18, 1999
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Fed up with Christmas and all its excesses? Such woes have an ancient provenance. The following manuscript was recently unearthed during building work in Rome. Written in colloquial, even chatty, Latin (our translation can only be an approximation), the text is a first-century guide to etiquette during Saturnalia, the pagan festival which Christmas replaced. Such guides were popular among imperial Rome's workaholic middle class
SATURNALIA is the most wonderful time of the year, and also the worst. You want to enjoy yourself, but every December you end up exhausted, hungover and broke. All that shopping! All those presents! All that food! All those children and ...