Caristia
Caristia or CHARISTIA a Roman domestic feast, celebrated on viii. Kal. Mart. (Feb. 22). Following the DIES PARENTALES (Feb. 13-21) and FERALIA (Feb. 21), days sacred to the dead (Ov. Fast. 2.533 ff.; Mommsen-Marquardt, vi. (iii.), 283 note 6, 298), this festival was a day of rejoicing and thanksgiving for the survivors. None but relations and members of the same family were invited, and the opportunity was taken to reconcile any quarrel or disagreement that might have arisen among them (Val Max. 2.1.8). The derivation is from χαρίζομαι, to grant a favour or pardon; but caristia is the approved spelling, and Ovid seems to have connected the word with carus. (Ov. Fast. ii 617 ff.; Mart. 9.54, 55; Tertull. de Idolol. 10 Orell. Inscr. 2417; Kalend. Rust.; Mommsen-Marquardt, vi. (iii.) 125; Paley on Ov. and Mart. ll. cc.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.