Historia de la Navidad

From its origins, Christmas was a field of struggle between the strictest sector of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and a part of the Church that considered the Christmas holidays as an opportunity to keep alive among the people the most varied senses of Easter joy, of the joy and even the sacred and controversial spirit of laughter. The controversial celebrations on the occasion of the birth of Jesus -licentious games and dances, buff comedies, grotesque rituals, banquets, obscene Christmas carols...- could seem irreverent, but they served as an escape valve from boredom, at the same time that they allowed certain transgressive messages as that of "the last will be the first", in accordance with a festive time of inversion of order. Alberto del Campo shows that the clergy did not always censor popular entertainment, but rather contributed to a conception of the festival and humor that incorporated satire to power, including the parody of sacred characters such as Saint Joseph or the fury of the madmen and Jesters. This surprising book, halfway between history and anthropology, discovers the construction of the Christmas festivities as the engine of festive enjoyment in Western Christian culture. In addition to being an obligatory reference for those who dare to know the many facets of comic religiosity -never completely extirpated and which has had its greatest exponent in the risus natalis- this original and extensive study ultimately reveals an unsuspected cultural history around to fun and playfulness.