Yo, Saturnalia.

The morning of December 25th, my mom and I heard on NPR a segment (originally aired a few weeks ago) about the ancient holiday of Saturnalia in pre-Christian Rome, and about the notion of Romans getting all peeved about being told merry Christmas instead of the traditional greeting of Yo, Saturnalia. Satire? Humor? I didn't really hear most of it (and I can't find the transcript, although there seems to be mention of this topic elsewhere on the web), but I've totally decided to start saying Yo, Saturnalia. It's fun!

According to Wikipedia:

The Saturnalia originally were celebrated with a public banquet. It became one of the most popular Roman festivals which led to more tomfoolery, marked chiefly by having masters and slaves switch places, which led to widespread drinking and debauchery, so that among Christians the (lower case) word "saturnalia" came to mean "orgy". The customary greeting for the occasion is a "Io, Saturnalia!" — io (pronounced "yo") being a Latin interjection related to "ho" (as in "Ho, praise to Saturn").

Yo, Saturnalia. Anyhow, after opening our presents (thank you to all), we set out to continue house-stalking. After discovering a large number of old, empty homes (just waiting for me to buy them, except for the fact that they weren't for sale...), and then decided to stop by one that was actually for sale. I had seen its picture online, which immediately made me want to go and see it in person. Now, the house is about double what I would ideally like to pay, but I think my mother and I have both fallen in love with the place, and assuming someone doesn't already have it under contract (No house-buying harm! Keep your fingers crossed!), we're going to go poke about the insides tomorrow. Wish me luck!!

Mom's xmas tree; Dusty in the wrapping paper

After wrapping up our xmas morning house-stalking, we headed off to Frank's (north of Live Oak, FL) for xmas dinner. Dinner was scrumptious: shrimp bisque, shrimp, caviar (courtesy of my students), veggies and rice and lamb chops. Accompanied by champagne and eggnog with cognac. Mmmm.

Red Caviar

Mom and I eat caviar

We spent the night at Frank's and drove to Lake City, FL the next morning. And here I thought I would finally be able to have a winter holiday without Lake City for once in my life, and there we were, dammit. We visited my mom's friend Kathy and then took her sister (another Kathy) out for lunch and made our way back to Waycross. I was all excited that we were going to go look at a house, but the real estate office was closed, xmas having fallen on a Sunday making Monday the public holiday. So, we try again tomorrow. That's my story. Yo, Saturnalia.