April Fools

     All things being equal, this column will appear on April first.

     I was never much on April fool's jokes, but I do like the idea of not taking ourselves so seriously. Seems to me that one of our most persistent obstacles to peace is the deadly earnestness with which we insist on the importance of the trivial.

     There are several opinions about the origins of April Fools Day. I like the one, which is actually not very likely, that it arose because someone forgot to tell a lot of people that Pope Gregory decided to change New Year's in the late fifteen hundreds. The Internet and satellite television being a few years off, this is not as far fetched as it seems. News traveled slowly. But even the most gullible peasant was probably a little skeptical when someone came wandering by and told him that they rolled back the calendar by three months. New Years in the middle of winter? You're pulling my leg. What kind of fool do you take me for? In fact, it wasn't until the late seventeen hundreds that we here in North America made the change. By then, we were so out of step that we had to give up eleven days of the year. Now there's an April Fools joke if ever I heard one.

     I have trouble remembering what day it is now; don't confuse me by making tomorrow two weeks from now.

     Another explanation is that April first, as I'm sure most of us noticed, comes shortly after the first day of spring. Celebrations of the return of the sun, new life springing forth and all that, are tens of thousands of years old. They were going on, including the custom of practical jokes, long before ol' Gregory decided to pull a fast one on everyone with the New Years thing.

     Being able to get out of the house on a warm spring day is still enough to make us giddy. Imagine what it was like for people who couldn't be sure they wouldn't starve or freeze to death. A little frivolity at still being alive is the least that one could expect.

     When I was pondering the various suggestions on the origins of April Fools Day, I was struck by the fact that there was really no absolute answer. Some ideas, like the calendar, are pretty well documented. Even so, the connection between Pope Gregory and April Fools is mostly a matter of educated guesses on the part of researchers.

     It's rather like the party game Broken Telephone, where people pass along a word or phrase. By the time we reach the end of the chain, the message is badly distorted, often with hilarious results.

     The problem is that we hear what we expect to hear; whether in a party game, in the quest for the origins April Fools, or in our faith.

     In the end, it doesn't really matter what the true origin of April Fools is. Pope Gregory or ancient rite of spring, it's still an opportunity to pull silly pranks on one another and have some harmless fun. To celebrate our ability to laugh.

     The same is true of our faith. In the end, it's not the relative accuracy of one tradition over another that matters. All have some element of the broken telephone in them. Rather, it's our ability to see the Presence of God in all of our traditions. And more, to be able to laugh in joy at the coming spring of faith after a long winter that we weren't sure we'd survive.

     The Golden Rule Tip: Before playing your April Fools joke, remember to ask yourself if it would be funny if it was done to you.