Streets of Hope

So, record is that your slave-masters were kind to you. Didn't it make some of Saturnalia's practices a bit redundant?

"Well, we certainly didn't stuff ourselves on cheese-filled globi on every day of the year outside of the festival, but the Cordatus household never approved of the appeasement of Cronos through human sacrifice. Once freed, I was one of the first members of Rome's Senate to lobby against their use, for obvious reasons. If Saturnalia was said to be the temporary return of the Age of Saturn, then its Egalitarian components truly were what deserved emulating, and preserving.

I've worn a pileus once or twice in the past, after being plied with drink, and certainly gambled away a reasonable measure of my wages with my master on games of chance. We all wore Greek synthesi for the festivities' duration, and perhaps predated certain Christian customs in offering one another small tokens of appreciation, a custom which remained long after I earned my freedom. 

I've kept Saturnalia ever since, although in a muted and, well, socially responsible form that befits someone of my advancing years. My cabinet's colleagues and their friends and family have never understood why I insist on our office parties being held on the seventeenth of the month, so early on before Christmas. The popular response is that I simply aim to free up their schedules for the hustle and bustle of the month's later days, but I've had some luck in that some aspects of legal studies can result in a junior growing to have some command of a few Latin phrases.

It always warms my heart when Lewis or one of the younger juniors shakes my hand one last time before leaving on vacation, only to smirk at me and lob an Io, Saturnalia on the same tone one might wish someone else a Merry Christmas."