saturnalia

An Ancient Roman holiday honoring the deity Saturn.

Saturn was an ancient Italian deity. It was attempted to identify him with the Grecian god Cronos, and fabled that after his dethronement by Jupiter he fled to Italy, where he reigned during what was called the Golden Age. In memory of his beneficent dominion, the feast of Saturnalia was held every year in the winter season.

CATULLUS described the Saturnalia as “the merriest festival of the year,” and Seneca [the Younger] reported that “all Rome seemed to go mad on this holiday.” The Saturnalia, named for Saturnus, an ancient agricultural deity, began on Dec. 17.

Alternative letter-case form of saturnalia.

It was odd that the literary festival should be turned into a Donnybrook fair, but so it was when I was a boy, and the tents and the shows and the crowds on the Common were to the promiscuous many the essential parts of the great occasion. They had been so for generations, and it was only gradually that the Cambridge Saturnalia were replaced by the decencies and solemnities of the present sober anniversary.

For New York Times photographers, it has been a night to leave their families in order to document the Saturnalia of Times Square.

A period or occasion of general license, in which the passions or vices have riotous indulgence; a period of unrestrained revelry.

a man who mounts the Hustings, must not allow himself to be sore-boned, or he invites his opponents to 'touch him on the raw,' not in the exercise of their malice, but their power; an election is a saturnalia."

They lodged men and women on the same floor; and with the night there began a saturnalia of debauchery—scenes such as never before had been witnessed in America.