did you know that april was sacred to venus, the festum veneris et forunae virilis being held on the first day, and thus it was suggested that aprilis was originally her month aphrilis, from her greek name aphrodite?

hm. thoughts to ponder.

as such are these:

the anglo-saxons called april oster-monath, the period sacred to the pagan saxon, goddess of spring, whose name is derived from the modern easter. st. george's day is the twenty-third of the month; st. mark's eve, with its superstition that the ghosts of those who are doomed to die within the year will be seen to pass through the church, falls on the twenty-fourth. in china, the symbolical ploughing of the earth by the emporer and princes of the blood takes place in their third month, which frequently corresponds to april in the roman calendar; and in japan, the festival of dolls is celebrated in the same month.

but most importantly...april starts off with a bang with april fools' day! originally a new year's celebration in the fifteen-hundreds in france, many people were fooled into continuing to celebrate it as a new year even when the king decreed new year's day to be moved to january the first. these backward folk were labelled as fools by the general populace, and were subjected to some ridicule, often sent on fools errands or were made the butt of other practical jokes.

and the tradition of harassment evolved over time, as human nature does, into the tradition of prank-playing on the first day of april. it eventually spread to england and scotland in the eighteenth century, before being introduced to the american colonies of both the english and the french.

the mexicans, however, celebrate their april fool's day on december the twenty-eighth, with the day of pranks originally being a day of sad remembrance of the slaughter of innocent children by king herod. it eventually turned into a lighter commemoration involving pranks and trickery (don't ask me how...dead children...pranks...you get the connection!)

and...just for another series of pondering...whether you'd want to take this blog entry for real is entirely up to you. you might end up being the fool, this april fools' day! ;^)