The World Turned Upside Down, or, Cicero at the Gym

 Listen to me and you shall hear, news hath not been this thousand year:

Since Herod, Caesar, and many more, you never heard the like before.

Holy-dayes are despis'd, new fashions are devis'd.

Old Christmas is kickt out of Town.

Yet let's be content, and the times lament, 

you see the world turn'd upside down.

-From "The World Turned Upside-Down" Thomason Tracts (669. f. 10 (47)), dated 8 April 1646.

"The World Turned Upside-Down" is a ballad written during the English Civil War in the 1640s as a protest against laws passed by England’s Puritan-dominated Parliament banning traditional celebrations of Christmas .  The Puritans (as was their way) believed the Nativity of the Lord should be a solemn, serious occasion.  Making merry, decking the halls, hoisting steaming bowls of wassail, and so forth, simply smacked too much of paganism for the austere Roundheads.

“The Puritan Governor interrupting the Christmas Sports,”
by Howard Pyle c. 1883

     "The War on Christmas," it seems, is nothing new. The writer of "The World Turned Upside-Down," however, might be surprised at just how upside-down the order of battle has become in the modern version of the conflict.  The Puritans wanted to take all the joyful and celebratory elements out of the observance of Christmas on the grounds that they obscured the holiday's religious significance.  21st century censors, on the other hand, want to take all the religion out of our celebrations of the Nativity (as is their way), leaving only things frivolous and indulgent. They are seeking, in short, to transform one of the holiest days of the Christian liturgical year into a sort of purposeless seasonal bacchanal.  Talk about the world turned upside-down . . .   

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