The tenth month of the old Roman pagan year, December marked the end of the agricultural year and the beginning of winter. The festivities of Saturnalia and Mithras are well known but various other pagan festivals were celebrated by the Romans during this month. Designed to celebrate the harvest, ward of winter and ensure the prosperity of the Roman people, these festivals included the festival of Bona Dea, the Consualia, the Opalia, the Angeronalia and the Larentalia
The Festival of Bona Dea
Celebrated on the 3rd December, this festival was dedicated to the Roman ‘good goddess’ and was dedicated to ensuring the welfare of the Roman people. Although it was marked by wide celebrations throughout roman society, its main ritual was nocturnal and held at the house of the chief magistrate.
An exclusively female ritual including only the vestal virgins and the female relatives of the magistrates, its rites were secret. All that is known is that the room was decorated in agricultural emblems such as vine branches and a covered wine jar, representing milk and honey.
The Consualia
Celebrated on the 15th December, this festival was dedicated to the Roman god of the granary, Consus whose name came from the verb ‘condere’ to store. His December festival marked the gathering in of the harvest and the beginning of winter.
Consus was an ancient roman deity who originated in the valley of the Circus Maximus. This area remained the centre for the celebration of his December rites. Grain was stored underground and so Consus maintained an underground altar on his ancient territory under the Circus which was only uncovered on his festival days. The statue of the god was surrounded by statues of other ancient agricultural deities such as Segesta and Tutilina
In December, the god was offered the first fruits of the harvest in this shrine by the flamen quirinalis and the vestal virgins. His festival was marked by the populace as a whole by horse races
The Consualia was one of two interlinked agricultural festivals that were celebrated in both August and December, the other being the Opalia.
The Opalia
Celebrated four days after the Consualia on the 19th December, the Opalia was in honour of Ops, the goddess of abundance and the reserved harvest.
Ops’s name meant harvest. Her festival overlapped the festival of Saturn, the Saturnalia, leading to Ops being regarded as Saturn’s wife.
The Angeronalia
Celebrated on the 21st December, this festival was also known as the Divalia and dedicated to the goddess Angerona, a mysterious deity known as the goddess of the winter solstice and ‘the goddess of will.’
The statue of the goddess was kept in a temple near the Porta Romanula, one of Rome’s inner gates near the Palatine Hill. The statue of the goddess was kept bound and with her mouth sealed, one finger laid against her gagged lips. Here, priests sacrificed to her on the shortest day.
The name of the goddess and the meaning of her festival have been debated. Some believe her name comes from the Latin ‘angor’ meaning suffocation, which would correspond to the condition of her statue. It is also possible it comes from ‘angerere’ to raise up or ‘angustiae’ meaning a short period of time. Both would relate to the period of the solstice, a short period of darkness before the re emergence of the power of the sun on the 25th December. If this is the case, then the state of the statue of the goddess takes on a different significance. Her bound status may not relate to the negative aspects of silence and death associated with winter but, according to Dumezil a focusing of will on the re emerging sun through silence.
The Larentalia
Celebrated on the 23rd December, this festival was linked to the funeral rites of the goddess Acca Larentia. The origins of this deity are lost.
Her name suggests she may have been the mother of the city Lares. ‘Acca’ may be derived from the Sanskrit for mother and Larentia from the name Lara or Larunda, the mother of the Lares. Larentia is also a name applied to the wife of the shepherd who found Romulus and Remus and subsequently acted as their wet nurse. She could also be a wealthy prostitute who left her wealth to the city of Rome on the condition that she was commemorated annually. This final role again ties in with her link to Romulus and Remus, in the person of the prostitute or lupa who according to legend originally saved and suckled them. The celebration of her festival by the Flamen Quirinus as a Parentalia or festival for dead parents suggests that the festival was for the commemoration of the divine ancestors of the city of Rome.
Sources
Archaic Roman religion Volumes I and II (1996) Georges Dumezil. Trans Philip Krapp. The John Hopkins University Press: Baltimore and London
The Oxford Dictionary of Classical Myth & Religion (2003). Ed Simon Price and Emily Kearns. Oxford University Press: Oxford.
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