Electric Christmas Card 2023: A Charlie Brown Saturnalia

It is December, the tenth month, the second day after the Ides, and a chill wind blows across the lower slopes of the Esquiline Hill in the city of Rome. C. Aurelius Brutus, a child wearing a yellow toga trimmed in jagged black stripes, walks out with his friend, Linus, clad in a crude blue homespun Greek chiton. They come to a wall and stop.

CAB: It’s beyond my comprehension, Linus. This is the season of Saturnalia, a return to the golden age of human existence, but I’m not happy. I don’t feel the spirit of a golden age.

They continue walking.

CAB: I just don’t understand Saturnalia, I guess. I like getting small clay figures in human shapes, and gambling at dice, and upholding the ancestral rites and all that, but a powerful melancholia rests yet upon my genius.

Linus: C. Aurelius Brutus, you’re the only person I know who can take a wonderful time like Saturnalia and turn it into a problem. Lucia’s right–of all the C. Aurelius Brutuses in the world, you’re the Brutus Maximus.

The children of the neighborhood are all playing on the cold ground, when C. Aurelius Brutus’s dog, Spoude, runs in among them and grabs Linus’s cloak. The other children, including C. Aurelius, grab hold of him, forming a crack-the-whip, until Spoude whirls them in the air, sending them flying in every direction. C. Aurelius slams into a statue of Saturn, portrayed as a old man with a scythe. Above him hover the words “A C. Aurelius Brutus Saturnalia.”

The children continue their games through the chill day. Septimus, a light-haired lad, and Linus’s sister Lucia are standing to one side. They notice C. Aurelius Brutus sitting near her witch’s hut.

Septimus: I think you have a customer.

Lucia goes to her hut and changes the sign from “Maga Non Est Hic,” to “Maga Est Hic.”

Lucia: All right now. What seems to be your trouble?

CAB: I feel a great melancholy. I know I should be reveling, but I feel surrounded by a decline in traditional moral standards as Roman pietas is infected by Greek ways and luxuries.

Lucia: Obviously, you’re being punished by a god. Yet the mere fact that you realize you need help indicates that your doom is still not certain. I think we should pinpoint your transgression. If we can figure out which divinity you have angered, we can determine which sort of lustratio you need in order to be purified.

Have you left vacant the office of Flamen Dialis? This would offend mighty Jupiter, to whom it is sacred.

CAB: I don’t think that’s quite it.

Lucia: Or maybe have you taken sexual liberties with a Vestal Virgin? This would enrage Vesta of the Hearth, for the Virgins are her servants.

CAB: Well, sort of. But I’m not sure.

Lucia: Have you buried your dead within the pomerium? That would anger Terminus, He Who Walks the Boundaries. Perhaps you’ve neglected to sweep your threshold. That would draw the ire of the Lares Domestici, gods of the household. Or maybe you have offended the Gens Pantheoni. Do you think you’ve offended the Gens Pantheoni?

CAB: What’s the Gens Pantheoni?

Lucia: The assembly of all the gods together.

CAB: THAT’S IT!

The force of his voice blows Lucia into the air.

CAB: Actually, Lucia, my trouble is Saturnalia. I just can’t understand it. Instead of feeling happy, I feel sort of let down.

Lucia: You need the force of duty. You need to reaffirm the virtues of your forefathers. How would you like to lead our celebratory rites?

CAB: Me? You want me to receive the honor of leading the Saturnalia rites?

Lucia: Sure, C. Aurelius Brutus. We need a leader of the rites. You need a feeling of virtue.

CAB: But I have no religious knowledge, such as is possessed by the pontiffs of the sacred colleges.

Lucia: Don’t worry. I’ll be there to help you. I’ll meet you at the Temple of Saturn. Incidentally, I know how you feel, melancholic and all. It happens to me every year. I never get what I really want. I always get a lot of stupid clay figures, and papyrus scrolls of lyric poetry, and stuff.

CAB: What is it you want?

Lucia: Occult secrets from Persia.

C. Aurelius walks to his family villa. As he passes the kennel of his dog, Spoude, he notices the beast has decorated the structure in the Greek style.

CAB: Even my faithful hound has gone degenerate.

His sister Sallia appears.

Sallia: I’ve been looking for you, Frater Maior. Will you please write a Saturnalia letter to our father at his post in distant Hispania, where the Senate has appointed him to administer the province?

CAB: Indeed I am hurried…

She thrusts the wax tablet and stylus into his hands.

Sallia: You serve as my amanuensis, and I will tell you what I want to say.

Honored Paterfamilas, how are you? Are you journeying up the cursus honorum? How is your wife, our beloved mother? Verily have I maintained my maidenly purity this year, not bringing our house into disrepute among men, so I have a long list of presents that I want: the thin tunic, the thick tunic, fulled linen cloth, chemises, bordered shifts, the marigold- or saffron-colored dress, the underpetticoat or else the light vermillion dress, the royal or foreign robe, the wave pattern or the feather pattern, the wax- or the apple-tint…

If it seems too complicated, make it easy on yourself. Just send money. How about didrachms and tetradrachms?

CAB: Didrachms and tetradrachms?!? Oh, even my baby sister…

C. Aurelius stalks away.

Sallia: All I want is what I have coming to me. All I want is to do honor to Fair Diana, protector of maidens.

C. Aurelius Brutus approaches the Temple of Saturn, where the rites are to be held. All the children of the neighborhood are present. They dance, throwing themselves about in wild abandon, swinging from side to side, bobbing in place. Septimus, the light-haired boy, Porcellum, a filthy boy, and Spoude, who is somehow playing the lyre, provide the music.

Lucia: Let all keep reverent! The leader of our rites shall arrive anon.

Violacia: Leader of the rites? What leader of the rites?

Lucia: I got C. Aurelius Brutus to lead the rites.

Patia: Oh no! We’ll be the figure of mockery in a New Comedy!

At this moment, C. Aurelius Brutus arrives.

Lucia: Here he comes! Attention, everyone. Here is the one that shall direct our religious obligations.

Everyone cheers except for one who throws a sharpened roof tile in C. Aurelius’s direction. The crowd parts to reveal it was Spoude.

CAB (sarcastically): A Roman’s boon companion!

C. Aurelius addresses the children.

CAB: Well, it’s really good seeing you all here. As you know, we’re here to worship aged Saturn. We’ll get right down to work. It’s the spirit of the worshipers that counts. The interest they show in fulfilling the duties handed down to them by their ancestors. Am I right? I said: Am I right?

Once again the children lose themselves in ecstatic dancing, giving no thought to their ancestors or the gods.

CAB: Stop the music! All right, cease this barbaric foolishness. Lucia, give the roles to these worshipers, that they might observe the festival by mocking their betters.

Lucia goes around with emblems of various roles in Roman society. She goes first to Freida.

Lucia: You’re the aedile.

Frieda (primping): Do aediles have skin as fair as milk?

Lucia continues to Porcellum. The boy is encrusted with dirt.

Lucia: Porcellum, you’re the consul.

Porcellum: In spite of my outward appearance, my sense of reverence for our patria is second only to our dear Brutus. I shall do my utmost.

Lucia continues to Shermus.

Lucius: Shermus, you’re a quaestor.

Shermus: Every Saturnalia it’s the same. I always end up playing a quaestor.

Lucia comes to her brother Linus.

Lucia: Linus, your philosopher’s skepticism angers the gods. Get rid of that Cynic robe.

Linus: It’s a shepherd’s garment. I’m demonstrating the omnipresence of death, “Et in Arcadia ego.” Give me one good reason I should doff it.

Lucia: I’ll argue you five axioms proving the omnipresence of death. One, two, three, four, five.

Lucia curls her fingers into a fist.

Linus: Those are good arguments.

As Lucia moves on, Linus swallows hard.

Linus: Saturnalia’s not only getting too Greek. It’s getting too dangerous.

Lucia returns to C. Aurelius.

Lucia: All right, oh leader. The roles have been assigned.

CAB: Let us begin our parodic stylings of the offices of the cursus honorum.

Frieda stands next to Porcellum, coughing.

Frieda: We can’t go on. His miasma of dust is obscuring my fair milky skin.

CAB: Don’t think of it as dust. Think of it as the soil of our most honored ancestors. Maybe the soil of the first crude village that grew into our noble city. It staggers the imagination. He may be carrying soil that was trod upon by Romulus and Remus. Or even my own ancestor, L. Junius Brutus, who slew King Tarquin and founded our honorable Republic.

Porcellum: Sorta makes you want to arrange a marriage pact between our families, doesn’t it?

Lucia: Lunch break! Lunch break!

She gestures toward Spoude, who’s holding in his teeth a bowlful of bread and dried olives.

CAB: We’ve got to get on with our sacred works. All right, let us start from the beginning. Begin the rites!

Instead of beginning the rites, the children once again dance, in wilder fashion than before.

Lucia: C. Aurelius Brutus, isn’t this a magnificent celebration of the day?

CAB: No, no, no! It’s all wrong! These actions are fit for the degenerate rites of Bacchus, not wholesome Roman tradition!

Lucia: Look, C. Aurelius, let’s face it. We all know Saturnalia is a big commercial racket. It’s run by a mercantile association from the isle of Rhodes, you know.

CAB: Well, these are one set of rites that aren’t going to be corrupted by the cynicism of the Greek-influenced upper classes.

Lucia: Look, C. Aurelius Brutus, what do you want?

CAB: The proper mood. We need to deliver a sacrifice unto Saturn and all the gods!

Lucia: A sacrifice! A plump victim, rich with meat for feasting. That’s it, C. Aurelius Brutus! You get the sacrificial beast. I’ll handle this plebeian mob!

C. Aurelius and Linus make to leave.

Violacia: And get a good victim, one that will make onlookers envious at our wealth!

Pattia: Yeah, C. Aurelius Brutus, do something worthy of your family name for once.

C. Aurelius and Linus go to a nearby market. There the vendors of sacrificial victims display their wares: masses of sleek kine, fat sheep and fine hogs, all fit to be splayed out on the altars of the gods. In the midst of them stands a scrawny pig, mangy and crosseyed, eating filth.

CAB: Look, Linus! Upon its flank this beast bears the mark of cornucopia, the sign of abundance. It must be an omen from the gods. This is surely our intended victim.

Linus: I don’t know, C. Aurelis Brutus. Remember what Lucia said? This doesn’t seem to fit the tempora or the mores.

CAB: I don’t care. We’ll slit its throat, and it shall be just right for our rites. Besides, I think it desires to be sacrificed by someone of our patrician class.

They purchase the pig.

Back at the shrine, Lucia is speaking to flaxen-haired Septimus.

Lucia: Septimus, play us the hymns of Saturn while we wait.

Septimus plucks upon a lyre the hymns of Saturnalia.

Lucia: No, no. I mean the hymns of Saturn. The best of days and all that stuff.

Septimus upon the double flute plays the hymns of Saturnalia.

Lucia: No! You don’t get it at all. I mean the music of the Golden Age, before the decline of human society!

Scowling, Sepitmus picks up a pair of rocks and beats them together rhythmically.

Lucia: THAT’S IT!

C. Aurelius and Linus return from their mission.

CAB: We’re back.

The children gaze, astonished, upon the misshapen hog.

Violacia: Boy, are you stupid, C. Aurelius Brutus.

Pattia: What kind of offering to the divine ones is that?

Lucia: Can’t you even tell a good sacrificial victim from a poor sacrificial victim?

Violacia: I told you he’s in disrepute. He’s not the type you can depend on to do anything worthy of the title Roman.

CAB: VAE!

The children burst into cruel laughter.

CAB: I guess you were right, Linus. Everything I do turns into a terrible defeat, akin to our losses at the hands of Hannibal. I guess I really don’t know the true greatness of Rome.

He raises his arms in supplication.

CAB: Isn’t there anyone who knows the true greatness of Rome?

Linus: Sure, C. Aurelius Brutus. I can tell you the true greatness of Rome.

Linus stands before the altar of the temple

Linus: Lights, please.

Archimedes-like devices focus light on Linus.

Linus: “In truth, who is there so senseless as either, when he looks up to heaven, not to feel that there are gods, or to think that those things are done by chance which are done with such wisdom, that scarcely any one by any amount of skill can comprehend their order and necessary dependence on each other? or, when he has arrived at the knowledge that there are gods, not to understand that all this mighty empire has been originated, and increased, and preserved by their divine authority? Let us, O conscript fathers, think as highly of ourselves as we please; and yet it is not in numbers that we are superior to the Spaniards, nor in personal strength to the Gauls, nor in cunning to the Carthaginians, nor in arts to the Greeks, nor in the natural acuteness which seems to be implanted in the people of this land and country, to the Italian and Latin tribes; but it is in and by means of piety and religion, and this especial wisdom of perceiving that all things are governed and managed by the divine power of the immortal gods, that we Romans have been and are superior to all other countries and nations.”*

That’s what Rome is all about, C. Aurelius Brutus.

Filled with emotion, C. Aurelius Brutus takes the hog and leaves. He walks through the windblown streets of Rome, and as he walks, looking up at the early-dark sky filled with stars, he hears the words again in his heart:

“It is in and by means of piety and religion, and this especial wisdom of perceiving that all things are governed and managed by the divine power of the immortal gods, that we Romans have been and are superior to all other countries and nations.”

CAB: I’ll show them. It really will be an acceptable sacrifice.

Passing a roadside shrine, he decides to sacrifice the hog. He brings the beast before the altar, and prepares to make the killing stroke…

…but he stumbles and scatters the coals, eliminating the sacred fire.

CAB: I extinguished it.

He groans in anguish.

CAB: Everything I do destroys Rome!

C. Aurelius Brutus retreats inside his father’s house. Behind him come all the other children. They see the remains of the attempted rite.

Linus hitches up the hog.

Linus: I never thought it was such a bad little sacrifice.

He wraps his philosopher’s robe around the beast’s neck.

Linus: It’s not bad at all, really. Maybe it just needs a little pietas.

The children busy themselves, reviving the flame on the altar and beginning music for divine hymns.

Lucia: C. Aurelius Brutus may be a blockhead, but he did get a nice victim.

They kill the hog. The delicious scent of burning meat ascends to the heavens like incense. Inside, C. Aurelius Brutus smells it as well. He scrambles out of his villa. To his amazement, he sees the pious tableau.

CAB: What’s going on here?

All the children: IO SATURNALIA, C. AURELIUS BRUTUS!

They join in the hymn to the divine Saturn, and so does C. Aurelius Brutus.

FINIS

*Linus’s speech is from Cicero, “On the Responses Of the Haruspices,” chap. 19. Since Cicero didn’t live until a century after these events, the text is an anachronism, but I don’t care. Well, actually, I do care, but I used it anyway.

The list of Sallia’s presents is from Plautus’s “Epidicus.”