Xmas Edit - On Festivals and Fasting

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• register on Meetup to attend
• update RSVP if plans change
• arrive before 3pm
• read the Letter before session
• review the Questions

Letter 18 - On Festivals and Fasting

Reading Time - 10 minutes

Knowledge of prior Letters is not required

Richard Mott Gumere translation used in session

"It is the month of December, and yet the city is at this very moment in a sweat. Licence is given to the general merrymaking."

Would you like to prepare for and survive the excesses?

Let us learn from Seneca's timeless writing on a period equally festive 2000 years ago.

We will go for a festive curry after the session around 6pm, there are limited spaces, if you wish to attend, please notify the organiser.

Questions we'll explore

1. It shows much more courage to remain dry and sober when the mob is drunk and vomiting; but it shows greater self-control to refuse to withdraw oneself and to do what the crowd does, but in a different way,—thus neither making oneself conspicuous nor becoming one of the crowd. (4)

How would you go about keeping holiday without extravagance?

2. It is precisely in times of immunity from care that the soul should toughen itself beforehand for occasions of greater stress, and it is while Fortune is kind that it should fortify itself against her violence. (6)

What do you make of this?

3. Set apart certain days on which you shall withdraw from your business and make yourself at home with the scantiest fare. (12)

How do you feel about establishing business relations with poverty?

4. For he alone is in kinship with God who has scorned wealth. (13)

What do you make of Seneca's views on riches?

5. Ungoverned anger begets madness. (14)

Does anger have any place ?
How would you guard against a mighty anger?

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