Io Saturnalia: Greeting children into history, one festival at a time

People all across England likely walk over history every day without even realising.

In Winchester, those who take hikes up St Catherine’s hill do so over where an iron-age fort once stood, Jane Austen’s final house is just steps away from the city centre, and, of course, the shadow of Alfred the Great and the Anglo-Saxon capital loom large over the city.

And despite being one of the smallest British cities in modern times, Winchester was once one of the largest settlements in Roman Britain.

At the Winchester City Museum, celebrations of the Roman festival Saturnalia are taking place.
Originally, it was celebrated on the 17th December on the Julian calendar (the 4th on the Gregorian calendar, which most of the world uses), but it expanded to be a week-long celebration lasting until the 23rd.
To celebrate, masters would serve their slaves, female gladiators would fight in Roman arenas, and soldiers at Hadrian’s wall would have had one of their only days off in the year.

This year, children of Winchester are being encouraged to connect with these celebrations, and to be curious about the world around them.

“It’s all about sparking creativity,” Nina Williams, a Visitor Experience Assistant explained. “We aim to get the children asking questions and making them want to come back to learn more.”

To do this, she says, the museum wants to remind people that history isn’t stationary – such as with the dates of Saturnalia changing – and the people who experienced it were living individuals, not just artifacts on display.

To get them involved, the museum creates trails, interactive activities such as sorting modern foods from Roman, and dress up.

The museum also offers specialised backpacks for children with certain educational difficulties, including a map of the museum, sensory information, and a teddy bear to explore with them.

Mili Bhatt, the VEA who introduced the backpack, said that the energy from children being excited over history is “rejuvenating for the museum. In my opinion [children] are one of the most important groups that we serve, because they’re the next generation.”

And with technology evolving at an exponential pace, and as AI and misinformation make online research harder, the Labour government is trying to encourage more media literacy and local history to be included in school curriculums.

History has an “inherent diversity” according to the first curriculum review of this government, which Professor Becky Francis says can be supported by teaching children how to analyse sources, understand historical perspectives, and comparing what they learn in the classroom to local history.
This should combat what was labelled a ‘monocultural worldview’ in the Call for Evidence ahead of the review.