Numerous paintings have been done over the centuries of peasant celebrations, often in wooded settings, where revelry is apparent, debauchery implied. The imagery captures times, sometimes after harvest when food has become abundant after the lean months before, other depictions suggesting spring when mankind recognized the rebirth of nature and the fecundity it implies.

The ancient Greeks depicted the animal nature released during these times of celebration as animal/human composites: satyrs, fauns, nymphs, suggesting, I guess, that the human inclination to give into one’s natural urges was less than civilized.

There are some of us, I suppose, who might benefit from such emotional release, civilization overlaying, as it does, a blanketing guilt upon those who might pursue such Bacchanolic revelry. Maybe we should rethink our moral priorities in the interest of mental health.