Saturnalia is a huge holiday in the World of the Wise, but Rachel will no longer celebrate it.
Why? She learned in The Raven, The Elf, and Rachel, that the god Saturn was the same deity known to the Carthaginians by the name of Moloch.
The novel is fiction, but all the quotes in italics are from real historical sources:
“Found it!” Gaius cried suddenly, poking a spot on the page of the huge thaumaturgical volume he was skimming. “I haven’t found your human-headed bull guy. But that first name? His boss?” He wroteMoloch on a scrap of paper. “It’s an alternate name for Kronos.”
“The Titan?” She tipped her head back, thinking. A reference came to her from an encyclopedia she had once read. “The Titans were worshipped by the Phoenicians, right?”
“Phoenicians, as in Carthage and Hannibal?” Gaius asked as he searched for a page number referred to in his book’s index.
“Exactly.”
“Do you think he rides elephants?”
“The demon or Hannibal?”
“The demon,” drawled Gaius. “I already know about Hannibal’s thing for elephants.”
Rachel ducked her head but could not quite restrain her giggling. She clapped her hand over her mouth, so as not to disturb her fellow patrons.
“The Romans rather hated the Carthaginians,” Gaius continued. “They hated them so much that they completely destroyed the city, ploughed the entire country under, and salted the lands.”
“That’s where the phrase delenda est comes from,” said Rachel, “as in ‘Carthago delenda est.’ ‘Carthage must be destroyed.’”
“Found something. This is from Alexander the Great’s historian, Cleitarchus.” Gaius peered at the text and made a noise of dismay. “‘There stood in their midst a bronze statue of Kronos. Its hands were extended over a copper brazier. The flames from the brazier surrounded the child. When the flames burnt the body, the limbs and seized up and the mouth opened, so that, until the body was engulfed in flames, it almost seemed to be laughing. This “grin” is known as “sardonic laughter,” as they died “laughing”.’”
. . .
“Look, this is from Plutarch’s On Superstition—which is a book even we Unwary have. This is what it has to say about the demon you and I were investigating—the boss demon. The one who is also Saturn. Or, in this case, Kronos: ‘… with full awareness, they offered up their own children. Those who had no children bought little ones from the poor. They cut their victim’s throats, as if they were so many lambs or young birds. Meanwhile, the poor child’s mother stood by, without weeping. If she uttered a single moan or cried a single tear, she had to forfeit the money, but her child was sacrificed nonetheless. The area around the statue was A C onsp i r a c y of An gels 367 filled with the noise of flutes and drums, so that the wailing of the victims did not reach the ears of the populace.’”
“Oh my!” Rachel sat down, hard.
“It’s truly terrible,” Gaius said hoarsely. “If there’s anything worse than mothers getting paid for letting their children be sacrificed… but only if they don’t cry—I don’t know what it is.”
“Me, neither,” she whispered.
“I also found this. It’s from Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian who lived in Sicily in the first century. He is describing a time when the Carthaginians were losing a war. He writes ‘They believed Kronos had turned against them. In former times, they had sacrificed to the god the noblest of their sons. More recently, they had been secretly buying and raising children that they sent to be sacrificed…. When they saw their enemies camped before their walls, they were filled with superstitious dread, for they believed they had failed to honor the god in the manner established by their fathers. In their eagerness to make amends, they chose two hundred of the noblest children and sacrificed them publicly…’”
“Two hundred?” Rachel cried out. “Two hundred of their own children?”
“That’s what it says,” Gaius’s voice sounded hoarse.
. . .
“These greater entities that thaumaturges call up—daemons, deva, djin, furies, gui, rakasha, yokai—they have certain qualities in common. One is that they are all obsessed with calendar dates. That’s why there are so many holy festivals: Equus-October, Samhain, Agonalia, Yule, Lupercalia, Liberalia, the Dragon Boat Festival, Saturnalia, Zagmuk. The list goes on and on.
“Every deity has sacred days,” he continued. “Each one is jealous of how they are observed. Though one does not hear as many horror stories about revenge for forgotten sacred honors carried out during the last few centuries. In fact, everything’s been rather quiet the last few centuries god-wise.” He looked thoughtful. “But that’s another conversation. Point is, this creature may have a date when it would expect major sacrifices to be carried out.”
“Of course!” Rachel clapped her hands. “They are going to summon him on his name day! That’s what the other demon said. What date is sacred to Kronos?… do we have a Calendar of Feast Rites?”
Gaius retrieved the slender volume that contained the days in the current year set aside to honoring various gods. He flipped through it. “They said his name day?” he said. “I don’t see Moloch or Krono… Saturn!”
“Of course, Kronos’s other name is Saturn! The Titan of Time who ruled during the Golden Age and was overthrown because he had the bad habit of eating his children,” said Rachel. “So his name day would be….”
“Saturnalia!” they both cried simultaneously.
They stared at each other incredulously. Saturnalia was a major holiday among both the Wise and the Unwary.
“That gives us until December 17th,” Rachel’s eyes widened until they were huge. “That’s the demon’s name day? Saturnalia? It’s one of the biggest holidays of the year, after…” she paused for a moment, mentally sorting the really big holidays from the medium ones. “Yule, Lupercalia, Vernal Equinox. May Day, Midsummer’s Night, Lammas, and Halloween.”
“We always treated it as the official beginning of the Yule Season,” Gaius said. “Here at school, don rags are done and we’re always out and home by Saturnalia. At home, back when I was an Unwary, we used to have a five day celebration, eat a lot of pork, drink Doom Bar, and smash a pig-shaped piñata.”
Rachel blinked slightly at the notion of a boy guzzling Cornish beer, but what she said was, “A piñata? You’re lucky. In the World of the Wise, we still do it the old way. My father, as duke, always had to be the one to make the first ceremonial cut on the pig’s throat, before the priests sacrificed it.”
Now it was Gaius’s turn to blink. “You used a live pig?”
She nodded solemnly. “Actually, we use a boar. For Freyr. That’s not so bad. It’s hearing the horses die, during Equus-October festival, that I hate most. I always try to get out of going.”
“And you guys don’t like us thaumaturges? I can’t see the difference.”
Rachel bit her lip, which was still sore from all the whistling, uncertain what to say.
“But back to Saturnalia,” he continued, “So, this Titan, whose day is celebrated by the whole Western world and even portions of the Far East—both Wise and Unwary—is a demon?”
“Disturbing.” Rachel shuddered.