Saturnalia was the Roman year's great release. Held at the Temple of Saturn in the Forum from 17 December, it began with public sacrifice and a banquet and then spilled into days of private feasting that Augustus fixed at three and later custom stretched toward seven. What made it memorable was inversion: the strict hierarchy of Roman society was turned upside down, so that slaves dined first and were waited on by their masters, spoke freely, and gambled openly, while everyone put off the formal toga for colourful dinner clothes and the pilleus, the felt cap that marked a freed slave. Each household chose a mock king, the Saturnalicius princeps, whose absurd commands were obeyed for the day.
People exchanged gifts, above all wax tapers (cerei) and little clay dolls (sigillaria), and greeted one another with io Saturnalia. Roman writers read the festival as a yearly re-enactment of the lost Golden Age, when Saturn ruled and no one owned slaves or property. Its midwinter timing, gift-giving, licence, and candlelight have long invited comparison with later December celebrations, though how much passed directly into them is debated.