A Candlegrove visitor explains the tradition thusly: “The Bean is for the King and the Pea is for the Queen.
Medieval versions contained a bean and a pea…one for the King and the other for the Queen. Eventually, this tradition was linked to Twelfth Night. This evolved into the holiday practice of baking a cake containing a bean. Saturnalia and related festivals of its day were ruled by a mock king, chosen by bean ballot. Loose reins are given to public dissipation everywhere you may hear the sound of great preparations, as if there were some real difference between the days devoted to Saturn and those for transacting business….Were you here, I would willingly confer with you as to the plan of our conduct whether we should eve in our usual way, or, to avoid singularity, both take a better supper and throw off the toga. Read it from the pen of Seneca the younger…he writes here about Rome during Saturnalia around 50 A.D: It is now the month of December, when the greatest part of the city is in a bustle. Candles and lamps chased away the spirits of darkness.Īs Roman culture became more licentious, so did Saturnalia. A mock king - the Lord of Misrule - was crowned. Cross-dressing and masquerades, merriment of all kinds prevailed.
Rich and poor were equal, slaves were served by masters, children headed the family. The usual order of the year was suspended: grudges and quarrels forgotten wars interrupted or postponed. They feasted, they gave gifts, they decorated their homes with greenery. The Egyptian and Persian traditions merged in ancient Rome, in a festival to the ancient god of seed-time, Saturn.The people gave themselves up to wild joy. As the old year died, rules of ordinary living were relaxed. One of the themes of these festivals was the temporary subversion of order. The annual renewal festival of the Babylonians was adopted by the Persians. They decorated with greenery, using palms with 12 shoots as a symbol of the completed year, since a palm was thought to put forth a shoot each month. They set the length of the festival at 12 days, to reflect the 12 divisions in their sun calendar. What do you do with the time between two seasons of heavy work? Why not have a festival? Ancient societies clustered around the Mediterranean perfected this idea over centuries - and gave us traditions still in use today.įour thousand years ago or so, ancient Egyptians celebrated the rebirth of the sun at this time of year. Ancient idea, probably much older than written history.
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