Esoteric Coffeehouse

It’s almost April Fools Day, and you should be either thinking of a prank or considering how to avoid being ‘fooled’. That’s because, on 1st of April, there are only two types of people out there: the pranksters and those being played a prank.

Nobody has been able to decipher the actual origin of April Fools Day. Theories abound from attributing it to the Bible and the Gregorian calendar change to the Holi festival in India, which has similar characteristics. You can read all about it in the Wikipedia article (1). I’m interested so much in where the celebration came from but why it survives to this day. What makes us still enjoy playing the April Fools game in this day-and-age?

Before answering that question, it is perhaps a good idea to look at the characteristics of this informal celebration. As we all know, it always occurs on the 1st of April, which is the first month of real spring (after the spring equinox) and used to represent the first day of the Julian New Year (2). Thus, it is a time of unclear, tentative beginnings, where things are not yet settled in their ordered pattern. The weather is still capricious, windy and cold; winter wrestles with the spring, and nothing is certain yet.

This time of disorder, uncertainty and ambiguity is an ideal period for the emergence of the ‘fool’. The fool is a person socially defined as ridiculous, inferior or incompetent (3) or, an unintelligent person, somebody considered to lack good sense or judgment (4). The fool is someone who is made fun at. We can see from these definitions that the fool is a role assigned by the others, or perhaps assumed by someone by himself or herself – it does not exist outside a social environment. Thus, a fool is ‘made’ (5). A good example of ‘making a fool’ is certainly the April Fool prank. The prankster seeks to prove the ‘prankee’ as a fool – a gullible or weak-minded person. If the ‘prankee’ falls for the joke, he has been made into fool.

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Since tonight is Halloween, I thought that I might do some research into its origins and meaning found in the Celtic Festival of Samhain. Celebrated at the beginning of November, Samhain marked the coming of the winter months, with their dimming light and heightening darkness. The root of the word “Samhain” comes from “samhradh”, meaning “summer” in Irish Gaelic¹. While the exact etymology has not been confirmed by scholars, in Celtic tradition, “Samhain” corresponds to “end of summer” (a combination of samh “summer” and fuin “ending, concealment”).  Samhain and Beltanne (May Day) stood in opposition as the beginning of the season of winter and summer, respectively, but Samhain was a much more prominent festival and may have marked the beginning of the Celtic New Year as Frazer has pointed out ².

Samhain was, consequently, a festival of deepening darkness and budding light. It was a meeting place between two opposites – the winter and the summer, the dark and the light, death and life. As such, the festival contained both aspects of existence – although the darkness, increasing at this time, was more profuse and substantial.

In its ‘dark’ aspect, Samhain marked a period of destruction and chaos. Perhaps the most dramatic illustration of this was the ritual killing of the Irish kings of Tara. According to Dalton’s evidence and interpretation, the kings that had behaved unsuitably or unpiously in office would be killed on the day of Samhain³. Ritual killing was also effected against animals: Samhain was the season when the cattle that would not be kept through the winter were slaughtered⁴.

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