This festival of the Saturnalia (of which the most complete account is given by Macrobius in his _Conviviorum Saturnaliorum_) dated from the remotest settlement of Latium, whose people reverenced Saturnus as the author of husbandry and the arts of life. At this festival the utmost freedom of social intercourse was permitted to all classes; even slaves were allowed to come to the tables of their masters clothed in their apparel, and were waited on by those whom they were accustomed to serve. Feasting, gaming, and revelry were the occupations of all classes, without discrimination of age, or sex, or rank. Processions crowded the streets, boisterous with mirth: these illuminated the night with lighted tapers of wax, which were also used as gifts between friends in the humbler walks of life. The season was one for the exchange of gifts of friendship, and especially of gifts to children. It began on the 17th December, and extended virtually, to the commencement of the New Year. Prynne[3] speaks thus of Christmas: "If we compare our Bacchanalian Christmasses and New Year's Tides with these Saturnalia and Feasts of Janus, we shall finde such near affinytie betweene them both in regard of time (they being both in the end of December and on the first of January), and in their manner of solemnizing (both of them being spent in revelling, epicurisme, wantonesse, idlenesse, dancing, drinking, stage playes, and such other Christmas disorders now in use with Christians), were derived from these Roman Saturnalia and Bacchanalian Festivals; which should cause all pious Christians eternally to abominate them." [Footnote 3: _Histrio Mastix_, ed. 1633, p. 757.] The Anglo-Saxons and early English knew not the words either of Christmas or Christ-tide. To them it was the season of Yule. Bede (_de temporum ratione_, c. 13), regards it as a term for the winter solstice. "Menses Giuli a conversione solis in auctum dici, quia unus eorum praecedit, alius subsequitur, nomina acceperunt": alluding to the Anglo-Saxon Calendar, which designated the months of December and January as _aeerre-geola_ and _aeftera-geola_, the former and the latter Yule. Both Skeat and Wedgwood derive it from the old Norse _jol_, which means feasting and revelry. Mr. J.F. Hodgetts, in an article entitled "Paganism in Modern Christianity" (_Antiquary_, December 1882, p. 257), says:--