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Medieval Christianity understood the debt that goodness, faith, and sweetness owe to their opposites, explained Alain de Botton in an article in Harper's Magazine earlier this year.
"For most of the year it preached solemnity, order, restraint, fellowship, earnestness, a love of God, and sexual decorum-and then, at New Year's, it unleashed the festum fatuorum, the feast of fools, and for several days the world was upside down. Clergy played dice on the altar, brayed like donkeys instead of saying 'Amen,' had drinking competitions in the nave, farted to the Ave Maria, and delivered spoof sermons based on parodies of the Gospels.... After drinking tankards of ale, they held their holy books upside down, burned excrement instead of incense, and urinated out of bell towers. They tried to marry donkeys, tied giant woolen penises to their vestments, and held boozy orgies on the altar."
This sacred parody wasn't just a joke, argued de Botton, but to ensure that things would be the right way up for the rest of the year.
"If you really think that the Christmas...