So. Maybe it’s just a grammar thing, but is it April Fool’s Day or April Fools’ Day? If it’s Fool’s then that means there is only one fool. But if it’s Fools’ Day then all of us fools have a day. But enough of that stodgy ninja grammar  stuff. Let’s talk about the name of the day.

Apparently at one time, after the vernal equinox and the arrival of spring, April First was considered the beginning of the new year. Who knew? I don’t think I’d ever hear that before. Maybe because everything was new? The cold and hoary winter was in the past. Trees and shrubs were blooming, babies were being born. New, I tell you.  According to an internet article April Fools’ Day has an uncertain origin. When the calendar was changed to make January 1 the beginning of the new year under the Gregorian Calendar, those who stuck to keeping New Year’s Day as April First were made fun of, sent on a fool’s errand, enticed to do silly things on this pseudo new year day. But there’s not a lot of evidence to support this.

Another theory is that back in Roman times, Constantine allowed the court jesters to rule the empire for a day, and they called for a day of absurdity. But that turned out to be just another April Fools’ Day joke by a professor of history at Boston University.

As there seems to be some doubt as to the origin of april Fools’ Day. Here’s my personal take on the origin of the day. It was a brutal winter. The snow was piled ten feet and people had to get out of the house through the upstairs windows if they went out at all. And then it all started to melt. All that snow had to go somewhere and because it became warm slowly, the snow melted into the ground giving a huge boost to all the local flora. Trees had bumper crops of leaves, bushes blossomed  without shame on every inch of their branches: forsythia, azalea, marigolds, snapdragons, lavender, wisteria, dogwoods, the air was perfumed with the fragrance of a million blooms. And one out of every five people were dazed and disoriented from the pollen; headaches, toothaches, sneezing, coughing, runny eyes. And they went nuts! Doing and saying the most foolish of things. That’s where it all began.  All because of Spring.

And, if you want to read about the top one hundred April Fools’ Day pranks, click here 🙂

We’re moving into the best part of the year, the liturgical year. You may think that is Christmas, but you would be wrong, in my book, at least. Easter is the best! It is the promise of new. It is spring. The awakening. The bountiful. The miracle. Easter with bunnies and eggs, jelly beans and almost everything that is wonderful about sweets.

One of the books I always read during Lent is The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. My copy is from 1961. It’s an old book. Almost bereft of cover, the price at the top right hand corner is $1.95.  But this year I couldn’t find it, and I almost didn’t miss it until I started thinking about the end of Lent, the beginning of Easter and all that information about the art of temptation. This is reading about sin and greed as a ‘good’ thing. We read  Screwtape’s instructions to his nephew Wormwood on how to undermine faith, and bring more souls to their master. When I was younger I thought of it as an ‘opposite’ book. Just do the exact reverse of what Screwtape suggests and you are golden.

As I grew I realized the exact reverse was harder than it seemed to a thirteen year old. And, during Lent, The Screwtape Letters are a gift, a reminder. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I’m pretty sure there are turn signals on every car on the road today. Well, maybe not the antique cars, like the Model T’s and so on, but every other car on the road. And yet, it is amazing how many drivers fail to use them. Talk about a lack of civility!

Ah, but you’re thinking, this is a little thing, the real problem is in politics or cable news shows. No. I disagree. Our politics have been bloodthirsty since the beginning. Good lord, it took a war for us to be a country. And then it took years, years I tell you, to get the whole federal versus state thing worked out and that only lasted until the middle of the 1800’s. True, slavery was a part of that, sadly true. But at issue too was states rights. And that issue is still out there, states are suing the federal government over the health care bill. So, to quote Lucy, Good Grief! does anyone really read their, no, our history? And our history shows that we can disagree.  But history is not the subject. The devil is in the details. Or. It’s the little things that count. Would you think the world more civil if the people you meet said ‘excuse me’? Or ‘thank you’? Or just ‘please’? I think the answer is yes. We can turn off the politics, the cable news shows. But it would be very hard to turn off our interactions with others.

Back to turn signals. LOL, a personal crusade of mine. Signal to move lanes and to turn. Not tough, you don’t even have to put your arm outside the window!