2min chapter

Behind the Bastards cover image

Part One: Keep the Yuletide Gay: Saturnalia & the Puritan War on Christmas

Behind the Bastards

CHAPTER

The History of Ritual Transvestism

The Lord of Saturnalia after being king for a week was sacrificed to Saturn. The Romans were like, what if we use candles as representatives of human life and we sacrifice these candles by lighting tapers? So it's possible that the tapers part of Christmas where everyone has taper candles traces back to fascinating humans really, really makes you look at those candles differently. There was cross dressing, just like a fuck ton of cross dressing. It gets called ritual transvestism. Some would say people are still doing it now.

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