Why did the Puritans ban dancing?

Why did the Puritans ban dancing?

Having fun is sinful

only queerboys and Harlots dance, Jebediah

Time spent dancing is time you should be spending on your hands and knees, begging forgiveness for your terrible sins.

They were mean hateful little shits

dancing is for fags, degenerates and the low iq

seriously have you even seen a reasonable human being dance?

dancing is fucking stupid

Because they hate anything remotely fun and expressive. Fucking anoying you can still feel their presance today in the United States.

...

This.

Our lord and saviour Lindybeige dances.

Because fuck dancing

Is that even true? The reputation of Puritans as killjoys is just a meme. They loved to fuck. In fact, Puritan funerals consisted of everyone, including children, getting shitfaced.

/thread

Happiness is evil

what else did they ban?

Dancing can lead to pre-martial sex.

Christmas

NO FUN ALLOWED

t. God

White people dancing is gross

...

Because dancing was used as an excuse for men and women to be in direct contact with each other and the dances popular at the time were very touchy.

It certainly is not a meme. Early puritan communities were overwhelmingly focused on stoic suffering and plainness. Church services for example, which were essentially mandatory, had no music or song of any kind, it was just hours and hours, which you were expected to stand during, of austere preaching in the barren confines of a protestant chapel. The no-dancing thing is just the tip of iceberg. They loved "fucking" in the sense that they married young and had large families but this was about the only pleasure afforded to the puritan. That and the occasional glass of wine but getting shitfaced was the absolute peak of sinful indulgence. Which they avoided at all costs.

They were extremely safe and orderly but my god, the atmosphere would be absolutely suffocating.

They did soften up over time, but it's not like the initial mindset ever went away. As someone in this thread pointed out their influence is still felt politically, our future attorney general would probably have felt right at home among them and he would take that as a compliment.