Drunkardness

Breathen^([sic – meaning Brethren]) John Brunk Juner and Wilson Bomer gave the Church satisfaction for being over taken^([sic]) in drunkardness

I have toiled through twenty years more—I have lived a life of the most appalling suffering and misery—and now whilst I totter on the brink of eternity, I am still a drunkard! If ever a human being has suffered for the crime of drunkardness, that being am I.

Yet, never did I in my drunkardness— […] / While my poor post of a husband held a horse, / Or sponged a mule, or wagon, for a drink,— / Smother a child in bed, or let one tumble / Into a tub and drown, as you did, after / Returning home from church, where, in the hymning, / You and your old hag mother had been steepling / On either side of that black-whiskered villain.

A large number of arrests for drunkardness and other disorder,^([sic]) were made during the Christmas week, but only in communities where whisky was sold.

Even if the city did take the shape of a distorted diabolical ogre unleashing enticement and temptation to drunkardness, sin and lust, at the same time it took the shape of a generous, beautiful maiden offering education and culture, hospitals and libraries, and churches for the administering of Sacraments and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

People in Europe were already following the Roman celebration of Saturnalia, which took place in December just like de Bacchanal celebration. This was a time of wild revelry, drunkardness, orgies, and merrymaking.