May I suggest chocolate coins baked into your bread instead?Īnd if a week-long public holiday of merry-making isn’t your thing – and it’s perfectly understandable if gambling, heavy drinking, and other mischief-making are not your preferred December activities – there’s always the option to take a slightly more recent tradition and observe a modern religious holiday, with a not-so-modern language.Īfter all, most of the classic Christmas carols have Latin lyrics. These are the same people who poisoned themselves with lead pipes and let the, err, household waste run off into the streets, so don’t be too surprised. And although stars have a special significance in the modern tradition, the Romans liked to decorate with them too this time of year.Īlthough a modern understanding of germ theory has pretty much put an end to the practice of baking coins into bread, you can thank the Romans for that, too. The Romans would bring in bits of pine trees. The modern electric practice is definitely much safer, even if things didn’t work out for Aunt Edna’s cat.Įven dressing the home with branches and wreaths of pine is accurate. That lovely tree gracing your living room? Straight outta ancient Rome! Not only did the ancient Romans decorate theirs with treats and stars, they also set theirs aglow with candles. And, okay, dressing up in tunics is kind of fun. Latin students have nothing but demon-summoning jokes (don’t worry, most of us can’t speak Latin, so we’re totally harmless).
#Io saturnalia meaning plus
They can watch movies or television as “practice.” Plus they get songs, real songs written by actual artists, rather than their Latin teacher’s newest pronoun declension sung to the tune of Farmer in the Dell. (You mean being able to read the road signs and menus in half of Europe and most of Latin America isn’t useful enough?)Įven worse, French and Spanish students get to read novels or witty, surrealist short stories, not just parsing their way through the Aeneid.
While your grandpa’s going to be super into it – he’ll brag to all his friends about smart you are – everyone else just wants to know why you didn’t learn anything useful. “Wait, why?” To be followed shortly with, “I didn’t know that was even a thing anymore!” Trust us, it is. Does that count?” you’re basically begging to be asked. Unless you were rather exceptional and took German or something “exotic” like Italian – or for the kids of today, Japanese even.īut if you answer “Well, I mean, I can read Latin. In the U.S., “Do you speak any languages?” is basically just a way to ask if you were any good at high school Spanish or French. If you took Spanish or French in high school (or ever), you probably won’t understand.
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