More than you want to know:
From the days of Gregory the Great (end of 6th century onwards) "the Western Church tolerated and even attracted to her own festivals popular customs, significant of rejoicing, which were in truth relics of heathen ritual. Such were the Mithraic feast of the 25th of December, or the egg of Eostre-tide, and a multitude of Celtic or Teutonic agricultural ceremonies. ... such as the dipping of the neck of corn in water, sprinkling holy drops upon persons or animals, processions of beasts or men in beast-masks, dressing trees with flowers, and the like, but above all ceremonial dances, often in disguise."

A performance was observed by the Roman, Tacitus. He wrote of the sword dance, of which an important feature was the symbolic threat of death to a victim. There is occasional mention of this performance to the later middle ages. "By this time it had attracted to itself a variety of additional features and of characters familiar as mummers, pace-eggers, ... who continualy enlarged the scope of their performances..." "The dramatic expulsion of death, or winter, by the destruction of a lay figure- common throughout western Europe about the 8th century- seems connected with a more elaborate rite, in which a disguised performer ... was slain and afterwards revived (the Pfingstl, Jack in the Green (Green Knight)." In the 15th century, "livelier incidents were added...popular heroes such as St George..." Commedia dell' Arte figures were added- the doctor, etc.

The buffooneries of the feast of fools (or asses), "which enjoyed the greatest popularity in France (though protests against it are on record from the 11th century onwards to the 17th, was well-known from London to Constantinople."

Extracted from the essay on Drama (Medieval Drama), by Adolphus William Ward (known for his definitive "History of English Dramatic Literature to the Age of Queen Anne") in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edition.