April Fool’s Day is being celebrated on the wrong day, according to a paper published in this month’s edition of the University of Canberra Humanities Journal.
The paper was written by UC historian Dr Hartley Quinn based on a research project he undertook at the University of Aberdeen last year. He said that his research showed that the date had been changed for religious reasons during the reign of Mary I and that all Roman and Medieval tradition showed the true date for fools’ day should be March 21, on the equinox. But Dr Quinn thought that it was now probably too late for the day to be changed back.
Dr Quinn said the Holi festival in India and the Roman Feast of Hilaria were both celebrated at the equinox.
“”The sudden changes in the weather at the equinox prompted a mirroring playing-the-fool behaviour in humans,” Dr Quinn said. “”The same phenomenon is seen at the other equinox in October with the Halloween trick-and-treat behaviour.
“”In the early Middle Ages, the sudden change at the equinox was marked in towns and villages on March 21 in a ritual in which a mock Pope or bishop was elected for the day from among the low-born.
“”The March 21 date was also the date of the pagan festival of Saturnalia, which like many other pagan festivals was subsumed by the later Christian festivals.”
However, Dr Quinn said, after a time the festival had become an opportunity for satire of church practices and parodying of ecclessiatical ritual, so the festival had been banned by the Council of Basel in 1431. The ban had been more effective on the European continent than in Britain where the March 21 rituals had lasted until the 16th century.
In Scotland the equinox saw the coming of the cuckoo, the emblem of simpletons, so March 21 was a day to play pranks on people. In Scotland the victim is called a “”gowk”.
Dr Quinn explained that the shift to April 1 came about in England in Queen Mary’s time when Catholicism returned to England after Henry VIII’s break from Rome and the founding of the Church of England.
Dr Quinn’s paper cited church records revealing vigorous suppression of the March 21 festival, including some burnings at the stake by women participants in the festival as it was seen as evidence of witchcraft. The March 21 festivals were seen as a direct attack on Catholicism by unrepentant Protestants.
The Protestants responded by changing the date of the celebration to April 1. For their own safety they dropped all references to the equinox and any ritual that could be seen as mocking the Catholic Church, however they kept and strengthened the prank-playing element. Mary’s reign lasted only five years, but when it ended in 1558 and England became Protestant again under Elizabeth I, the festival never reverted to its original and correct date.
“”The significant element about the equinox which has been retained in the festival’s new date is the tradition that all pranks end at midday — the time of the precise apparent apogee of the sun — after which everything is an anti-climax,” Dr Quinn’s paper said.
Dr Quinn said he thought the equinox was a better day for such a festival. April 1 was an artificial date created by a man-made calendar, whereas the equinox had natural significance as the day when all places on earth had an equal length night and day.
In light of the UC findings, The Canberra Times has refrained from doing an April Fool’s Day spoof this year. Editor Jack Waterford said that, in any event, this year’s proposed Canberra Times April Fool’s Day joke _ a fairly traditional one centred around Lake Burley Griffin _ had leaked out. That had spoiled the essence of a good April Fool’s Day joke, which was to fool people, he said, so readers would just have to content themselves with having fallen for this one.