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The
festival of the April Fool (April 1st)
is celebrated throughout most of Europe
and the former colonial outposts of European
rule. This is an ancient festival, deriving
from pre-historic times.
The calends of April in ancient Rome
was sacred to Venus—as was the entire
month—and this day was called the
Veneralia (the Kalendae, or calends, was
the first day of the month in the Roman
Calendar). Public games, ludi, would be
held in her honour. This day was also
known as All Fools Day to the Romans,
and they would spend the entire day celebrating,
laughing, playing tricks, doing things
backwards, wearing women's clothes, dancing
in the streets, and generally carrying
on like fools and pranksters. This is
one of the few Roman holidays that has
preserved some of its original character,
under the modern name April Fools' Day.
The Fool stands in contrast to the King
as the lowest and highest in hierarchical
powers. The fool, jester or clown occupies
the humblest place in the court and symbolizes
the forces of chaos and licence, while
the king represents those of law and order.
The Lord of Misrule
The fool often took the place of the king,
as a scapegoat, in ritual sacrifice and
later became ruler as the Lord of Misrule
at Saturnalia-type festivals and at the
calends and all festivals associated with
intercalary periods of chaos. He was carried
over into Christianity in the Festival
of Fools, or the Feast of Asses, as the
Prince or Pope of Fools, or the Cardinal
of Numbskulls, the Abbot of Unreason,
or the Boy Bishop. In convents, an elected
nun could be dressed as a man and called
the Little Abbess. The revelries caricatured
stories in the Bible such as Baalam's
Ass and the Flight into Egypt; there were
processions in the streets with asses,
or men dressed as asses, and asses were
taken into the churches.
Why the ass? Nowadays an ass is considered
stupid and stubborn, but in earlier times,
the ass was sacred to the goddess, so
there was both an element of mockery and
also a reverence mixed in with the somewhat
scandalous enjoyment. Mockery and reverence?
Well, Jesus Christ did make his triumphal
entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday on
an ass. There were coarse representations
of Christian events and responses in the
mock services were made by braying. The
lower clergy were of the peasantry or
petty bourgeois and more in touch with
popular pagan beliefs and rites from the
Roman, Celtic and Teutonic festivals than
with the superimposed Christianity.
Chaos Before Rebirth
It was a time of reversal of the normal,
chaos before rebirth, buffoonery and license,
and therefore of fertility. The Boy Bishop
conducted mock services and gave a sermon
and sub-deacons took over the celebrations
with riotous and crude conduct.
The customs were abolished at the Reformation
in England but revived in Mary Tudor's
reign, to be revoked again under Cromwell;
in France they lingered on until the eighteenth
century. The early edict abolishing them
said they were 'rather the unlawful superstition
of gentilitie (paganism) than the pure
and sincere religion of Christe'. Most
traditional festivals had, and some still
have, a fool or clown, often a 'natural'
kept for the occasions; at other times
it could be some citizen who dressed up
as such and blackened his face.
Possessed by Divine Power
 In
earlier times the possessed and lunatics
were regarded with reverence as being
possessed by a divine power and having
the gift of prophecy. In most places the
fool was given considerable license and
could mock and caricature the secret scandals
and failings of local people, or he mocked
and mimicked the performers of festival
plays and dances. With the license of
such occasions he was also taken as the
putative father of any bastards born "in
forty weeks time... for if anything happens
in forty weeks time the blame will be
laid on the Clown". The clown was
garishly painted and disguised; this made
him impersonal, so he could break conventions
and taboos in the freedom of the return
to primordial chaos, which is also the
return to the paradisal state of childish
innocence before laws were imposed.
The Ship of Fools
The fool often symbolizes the evils of
winter, the time of cold and want which
is killed by the coming of spring. This
happens in Mummers' plays, sword, horn
and Morris dances in which the fool is
killed, then revived to represent the
resurrection of nature. The resurrected
fool then greets the bride and dances
with her to recommence the fertility cycle.
He can also play the part of Beelzebub
in such dramatizations. The fool's bladder
or whip, with which he "whiffles",
takes the place of the fertility-whipping
of the Lupercalia (see Valentine's Day)
and other such ancient festivals with
flagellation rites. The death of the fool
probably originated in human sacrifice,
to propitiate the forces of nature. The
Ship of Fools at camivals was originally
the Ship of Nerthus, the Teutonic Earth
Mother, at her spring festival.
So we can see that our light-hearted
day of tricks and japes has quite a serious
history. Some fools really do need to
be sacrificed, but at least they can then
be resurrected, if we follow the old ways...
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