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According to some sources, there is (or was, back when conscription was 2 years and dedovschina was more prevalent) a similar role reversal day in some Russian army bases among conscripts, where the "older" conscripts took on the roles of the novice ones. According to the same sources, this role reversal was not very humbling - none of the novices would dare to subject the "granddads" to the same tribulations they were subjected to, because the next day everything would be back to normal.
I don't know if the slaves in Rome were much consoled by Saturnalian symbolic role reversal. Did they have the presence of mind to think "the master will just go back to his usual oppressive self tomorrow"? Perhaps. Could they state it out loud?
If my leaders are going to put on airs of being worldly, I want them to keep the pretense up for more than one day a year.
In the US military, there's a tradition of senior leaders serving food for a single meal, like Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. Example 3-Star Admiral serving Thanksgiving dinner. In my 20-year Navy career, I have never heard anyone be critical of someone's choice to participate in this sort of event. I heard (and contributed to) whining as a Junior Officer because our CO decided the entire Wardroom would be doing it, but in the end we all did it and enjoyed ourselves. I have heard multiple sailors complaining that their CO didn't do it. I have never even heard of anyone be an asshole to a senior leader serving the food, although punishments are pretty quick for unjustifiable assholery to food service workers even when they aren't Admirals.
But even when people aren't being dicks to you, I will testify that it's quite humbling to be serving food to your entire command. It's good and valuable to get your head out of the big - often intangible - problems of your regular senior job, and focus on all the little things that have to come together in order to get plates of food for a stream of sailors. It's humbling, in my experience, going from worrying about writing official memos or following up on a logistics request, into just having to deal with ensuring that there's another tray of mashed potatoes ready for when we run out of this one: you absolutely can fail at the latter even if you have a Masters degree and 70 people reporting to you. It reminds you that for all your skill and power, you're still beholden to basic reality. It brings into sharp focus how no matter how brilliantly the potatoes were ordered and shipped, no matter how cutthroat the price negotiations were, if you don't do the basics of cutting them up and putting them into a mixer, cooking them, and having them ready to go when they're needed, then its all for naught.
If human nature hasn't changed too much, I would bet Saturnalia gave the masters a similar humbling experience.
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Isn’t one the chief complaints leveled at Trump, ever since he was a candidate the first time around, that he was/is "vulgar" and "unpresidential". I think that one of the reasons this little pr stunt has worked as well as it has is the relative lack of pretense.
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