Leilanie Stewart

Today it’s the shortest day of the year, and that means celebrating the return of light to the world. The winter solstice is the start of the traditional twelve days of Yule, from 21st December up until 1st January. Thousands of years ago, people would have sacrificed a cow for their community to feast on for the twelve days at a time when food was scarce after the harvest season ended. For our Yule celebration, we’re having turkey. This has been picked by the Princeps in our family, aka the little dude. Let me explain.

On 17th December, we celebrated Saturnalia, an ancient Roman celebration similar to Yule. Traditionally for Saturnalia, the social hierarchy would have been upturned for seven days of feasting, wine-drinking and merriment, and a slave or a child would have been put in charge as the Princeps. Our little literary dude is the Princeps in our family for the festive season. For Saturnalia, I made globi, an ancient Roman dish of cheesy dough balls. In ancient Roman society, a pig would have been sacrificed; since we can’t very well head on over to a neighbouring farm outside of Belfast and butcher someone’s pig, we sufficed with pigs-in-blankets, another seasonal favourite in abundance at this time of year.