Is Saturnalian a Word?

1. Of or pertaining to the Saturnalia. 2. Of unrestrained and intemperate jollity; riotously merry; dissolute.

When did Saturnalia become Christmas?

But by the fourth century A.D., Western Christian churches settled on celebrating Christmas on December 25, which allowed them to incorporate the holiday with Saturnalia and other popular pagan midwinter traditions.

How do you use Saturnalian in a sentence?

Its contents were by turns phantasmagorical, hyperreal, surreal, and saturnalian. So, come the dark third week of December, he and my wife and her brother and I left behind the saturnalian excesses of a Protestant Christmas and headed south. As a result, the authorities took steps to curb saturnalian excess.