Saturnalia- The Winter Solstice

In these countervailing extremes of light and darkness is the evocation of a limit reached in the arc of a life, a mood, a capacity, or in the hegemony of consciousness or unconscious. The Midsummer Night of the summer solstice is a night of fairy magic and dream, earth’s extravagant, sun-imbibed bloom and the lust and tenderness of lovers. Since ancient times, traditional celebrations—roundels, or circular dances; feasting; the lighting of bonfires—on the summer solstice mark this longest day and yearly pinnacle of the sun’s intensity: “On a summer midnight, you can hear the music / Of the weak pipe and the little drum / And see them dancing around the bonfire” (T. S. Eliot, “East Coker”). At the same time, the summer solstice signifies the reaping of the first harvest and the beginning of the sun’s gradual descent into darkness. The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, the time of Saturn’s dominion, of mown harvest, darkness, chill, death and the age-old presentiment of light’s extinction. But the winter solstice is also the point where the descent ends and the reascent begins; at the Saturnalia on this day, the roles of master and slave were reversed, signifying the notion of direction inverted.

Source: ARAS The Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism