1. 8 synonyms for Bacchanalia: Dionysia, debauch, debauchery, drunken revelry, saturnalia, bacchanal, orgy, riot

2. I received at once about the day of the Saturnalia what you despatched to me.

3. Rather, that is a description of Saturnalia —a week-long pagan Roman festival associated with the winter solstice (depicted on opposite page).

4. That was when pagans indulged in orgies during the festivals of both the Roman Saturnalia and the Celtic and German feast of winter solstice.

5. Mencken said politics had become an “endless saturnalia of bunk, of bluff, of stupidity, of insincerity, of false virtue, of nonsense, of pretense, of sophistry, of paralogy, of Bamboozlement, of actorial posturing, of strident wind music, of empty words—even, at times, of down-right fraud.”