09 December 2008 by Tristan Gooley
If someone had casually asked me to draw up a list of the people I was most likely to use as sources for my blogging over the coming week there would have been some predictable names. Nowhere in the top ten thousand names would the words ‘Nigella’ or ‘Lawson’ have appeared together. Regular blog readers will know how much I enjoy understanding the connection between phenomena such as the earth’s orbit around the sun and our daily lives. Christmas is such a time and, almost unbelievably, this is where we hand over to Nigella in her Christmas cookbook,
‘Biblical scholars generally tend to believe that Christ’s birth probably fell about six months after Passover, which would make it nearer September than December. However, the Roman Festival of Saturnalia – a time of merry-making, excess and misrule, precursor to the office party and much else besides – fell around the middle of…
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Tags: christmas navigation, nigella lawson, saturnalia, winter solstice |
25 November 2008 by Tristan Gooley
A great morning for stargazing and one planet in particular was holding court. Saturn hung brightly in the southern sky between Virgo and Leo.
In astronomical terms Saturn is an impressive planet, the second largest in the solar system and girded by its famous rings. It also comes with as much religion and mythology as you could ask for on a crisp November morning.
Saturn featured very strongly in Roman religion as the harvest god, responsible for sowing, seed and most things agriculture. His festival, Saturnalia, was a time of much merriment and became the most celebrated of Roman festivals as tools were downed, slaves granted temporary freedom and ‘certain moral restrictions were eased’, and for all their seriousness in battle the Romans sure knew how to ease a moral restriction when they chose to. It was such a success that we are still feeling its partying power to this day. Saturnalia…
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Tags: christmas, myth, new year, north wind, saturnalia |
