Hail Acca Larentia!
Hail Jupiter!
Hail to the sun!
Hail di lares!
Hail Juno!
Hail Diana!
Hail to the Tempestates!
Hail Quirinus!
Hail Mars!
Hail to the Brothers of the Field!
With give thanks for the protections and gifts of the gods.
We honour with joy the rebirth of the sun, the return of warmth and the fertility of our fields.
In this time of the longest night, we ‘bury’ the darkness
And cheer forth the light.
We accept the rounds of life as the spiral of well-being and endless discovery.
May all be thanked!
Salve Acca Larentia!
Salve Iuppiter!
Salve Sol Invicte!
Salve di lares!
Salve Iuno in Campo!
Salve Diana!
Salve Tempestates!
Salve Quirine!
Salve Marte!
Salve fratres avales!

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The Larentalia are feriae Iovi which allows that they are not only sacred to the goddess Larentia (Larentina, Lara, Larunda) – the dea muta Mania, mother of the lares – but also to Jupiter, the god of light. In essence, Larentia is an alternate indigitation of Diva Angerona. When she carries the honorific of Acca, she is expressly known as the nurse of Romulus and Remus. She possessed a sepulchre presumably near the shrine of Volupia on whose altar the figure of Angerona was to be found. This spot in the Velabrum near the Via Nova and the grove just past the Porta Romanula is where Acca Larentia disappeared. The rituals of the day consist of parentatio or funeral rites in honour of Larentia that were performed by the flamen Quirinus, the priest of Quirinus, and – from a suggestion by Plutarch – the flamen Martialis, the priest of Mars.

With the Larentalia, the festive and sacral rites for the month of December conclude. The honouring of a chthonian-terrestrial goddess along with a luminous deity with what is primordially the first day of the ensuing solar year is reminiscent of the contrasting figures associated with the Kalends of March, April, May and June – the first day of these respective months. The Fasti Antiates Maiores calendar also links the goddesses Diana and Juno in Campo with this festival day – both goddesses representing feminine cognatic equivalents of Jupiter. The funeral of darkness along with the rebirth of light culminate the Latin yuletide. The same calendar mentions the weather-deities, the Tempestates, in connection with the Larentalia. This may be a reference to the possibility of inclement phenomena that might obscure the rising or setting sun at this time of year. The deities may also have been suggested in that their designation contains the word tempus ‘time’ -  obliquely, perhaps, referring to the solstice itself. The movable Compitalia festivals in honour of the divine lares that appear to be connected to the first new moon or full moon following the winter solstice may be a lunar vestige that was retained when the Roman calendar itself became fixed and no longer determined by the moon. We can expect that the lares are also to be celebrated on the Larentalia – one instance being Mars and Quirinus whose priests are active on this day. They would be the original fratres arvales – the seminal brethren concerned with the fertility of the arva or ‘fields’. In time, the lares became the lares compitales – the guardians and protectors of the ‘cross-roads’. The solstice itself is a temporal cross-roads. As a college, the Arval Brethren came to number twelve priests – a likely reference once again to the twelve months of the ensuing year. Mars and Quirinus, of course, are further and quasi-historically instanced in Romulus and Remus. Ultimately, and as this concluding festival suggests, the divine lares, the divine twins, are Jupiter and Mars themselves.

In all, the Larentalia conclude the merry-making of the thirteen-day Latin Yule. The festival is to be celebrated joyfully and with family and friends. This is in the fullest sense a time for thanksgiving, kindness, sharing and feasting.