April Fool's Day

I believe I do have a sense of humour, in fact a sense of humour is to the British what fine cuisine is to the French. But pranks of the kind associated with April Fool's day fall well outside of what I find funny. I not only don't see the humour in pranks, but I think that people who are really into them have problems of the sort that only a head doctor can deal with.

The Guardian article sets out the story of April Fool's day but I like to have some kind of Celtic content in my explanations, otherwise it just doesn't do it for me. You know the kind of thing, April the 1st, the day on which all the village idiots were tolerated or thrown off a cliff. Throwing off a cliff wouldn't have been very Celtic though. The Celtic supernatural beings were quite into deception though. Gwyn map Nud who led the wild chase around the settlements at Halloween time was quite the trickster, but on a large scale. I wonder if he might have had a return engagement in April.

I'm just not buying that this day started when the Julian Calendar was replaced by the Gregorian one and New Year's day was pushed back to January the first. Everything else fits neatly in with pre-existing practices, Christmas, Easter, the Queen's birthday, oh, right, I see their point.

I can however see the attraction of having New Year's day on April the first. However, since this is based on the Julian calendar, what of the Celts? Well, as it happened, the Celtic year started at Samhain, around October the 31st.
Now, trying very hard as I am, to, well, basically invent, a Celtic interpretation for April Fool's day, this is what I propose.

Lughnasadh was roughly the 31st of July, and on this feast day of showing off - oh alright then, demonstrating skills - people could enter into trial marriages - see how forward thinking the Celtae were? At Beltain, celebrated around the first of May, you could end the trial marriage if it wasn't working out, so I'm thinking that by the first of April, the cards were pretty much on the table. If you didn't know by a month before the deadline that there was trouble at t'mill, then, well, you were a tad foolish.

Ok, well that one was a bit tortured, but it's the best I can come up with and at least I'm not trying to pass it off as the truth, WHICH IS WHAT PEOPLE DO ON APRIL FOOL'S DAY.

Bah humbug. There is part of me that quite likes the big, huge lies that the papers and Auntie Beeb have come up with over the years, black roses, life on Mars, Condoleeza Rice visiting Britain, oh no wait, I think that turned out to be true. I can smile wryly at those because it is playing the game, like the pantomime Dame, not the young, androgynous woman dressed as a man, but the very obvious older man dressed as a woman. Or the bit at the panto where all the kids in the audience have to shout 'Look behind you.' The papers giving us a big old wink while we join in.
When the media do that and it is obvious, it bridges the gap between them and us, it's like the whole country celebrating Christmas and Easter, all together now,
'Oh no we don't! Oh yes we do!'

What bugs me is the sly, the wretched, the bitterly deceiptful, I can't find humour in that. I don't want April Fool's day to be a day when the twisted get their turn, because, well, that's just not nice.