More on: Culture & Puritanism, as well as on Strong Drink and...that other thing...<g>
Christine, the colonial Americans who, you say, started drinking at breakfast were, for the most part, Puritans. And since you link strong drink & sex, what do you mean when you say that "we live in a very puritanical culture"? That we start drinking at breakfast? <gg>
Somehow, I smell Margaret Mead here (although I could, of course, be wrong). Have you read any of Derek Freeman's exposes of Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa, most specifically his latest book (published Dec. 1998): The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead : A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research? I will confess I have not, but I gather Freeman does a thorough job in demolishing the myth of a Samoan Eden where the young romp through a guilt-free (and non-puritanical, of course) heavy-sex adolescence. (Ah, well! Hope springs eternal!)
As for Strong Drink and Sex.
In certain societies, the link appears to have been an inverse one.
That was definitely true in Russian peasant society, for example, and to a certain extent, still is. The guys would go get drunk in the local tavern, and then come home and -- beat their wives.
Interestingly, the words for "you-know-what" and "beat" are very close together, derived from the same root. (The same, I gather, is true of French.) He "performs the act": "yebyot." He beats: "byot." Interesting connection, especially in view of the well-known Russian peasant saying:
"Ne byot, znachit ne lyubit."
If he doesn't beat [his wife], it means he doesn't love [her].
I don't know whether the same thing was true of Irish society, to take another example. But it is often said that in Ireland drink (the "good man's failing") was used as a substitute for sex.
Joan
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