[exratione]

A lens to look at this through is the struggle for control over the population. The competing factions in the Middle Ages were very different from those now - so the manifestations of authoritarianism naturally differed in the Middle Ages. Large numbers of holy days (holidays) went hand in hand with simony and temporal power emanating from Rome. The church was just as rapacious and self-interested as the lords who claimed ownership over the peasantry.

So then, a fractious feudal nobility, the ruler, and the church, now fractious corporate powers and a more unified state, with the church faded to irrelevance in temporal matters. The only constant is the undiminished desire to order the lives of others in order to farm them for profit, to be the stationary bandit.

Even if matters were the same, however, the march of technology would still make the present a far better place to live than the past. It is technology, not politics, that is the greatest driver of quality of life.

[emodendroket]

I mean, it's a lens, but I don't know that I'd view merrymaking during holidays as a sinister form of control.