Tuesday, April 1, 2025

It is the 1st of April 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

Yes- it is April 1st. Be wary of pranks and tricks, and if you try to pull one off, make sure to keep it light- no one needs a pretend engagement or pregnancy or the like. My favorite historical prank comes from the BBC in the 1950s- believe it or not, the spaghetti had been introduced in the Anglo world after soldiers returned from World War 2, and the BBC ran a news story claiming that the Spaghetti Weevil had been finally controlled leading Swiss Spaghetti trees to flourish and they included video of said spaghetti trees- brilliant.

And every year around this time- depending on the date of Easter we get two tired tropes: the annual magazine article wondering “did Jesus actually exist and did he actually claim to be God?”- they are the worst, and the ones that I dislike, “the surprising origins of April Fools Day”. The claim is that when the calendar reforms of the 16th century were made, the new year was switched to January 1st. This is true.

As you might remember from last week, historically, March 25th was the start of the new year, and the story goes that some were suspicious of the calendar reform coming from the Pope (this is true), and some continued to observe March 25th (yes, some did) and those- according to the story- were called “April Fools” for continuing to celebrate the new year into April- this is most likely false. It sounds lukewarm, a reverse-engineered “just so story,”… but are their connections to April Fools and the church? Yes!

Especially in the Eastern church, we have a long history of the “holy fool”- these are people who subvert social conventions to point out the absurdity of the fallen world. Using some of the Old Testament prophets as examples, these “fools for Christ” (certainly a Pauline concept) give away their possessions and go about in the cold with little to no clothing, essentially pointing out something fundamentally flawed with the world as it is- apart from Christ. This is a theme often used by Dostoyevsky in his novels, and a recent fun read is Oswin Craton’s “Holy Fools: the Lives of Twenty Fools for Christ”.

In the West, the best way to connect April Fools and the church is through the pre-Lenten season of carnival. It was a time of church-ordained frivolity that often got downright bizarre. Cross-dressing, jokes about priests and popes, stuff that went over-the-line but waits- it was on purpose. It has been labeled “festive inversion,” a way of making a parody of something- making something ridiculous and maybe even blasphemous as a way of 1) de-escalating conflict by allowing for a kind of “pressure valve” and 2) by saying “let's do everything wrong and backward today” you are subtly affirming the right and the forward. Of course, men don’t dress like women, and you don’t make jokes about priests and the like- but on this one day, it’s ok. And thus, the tradition of springtime frivolity- the spirit of Carnival (depending on the Equinox) got one day a year. And that’s probably as close as we can get to the “true origins” of the Holiday.

As mentioned, we are highlighting a few things in these next ten days leading up to the Live Ask Me Anything on the 10th- a shout-out to Mike in OKC, a Thunder fan and a top fan of the show for years now. As the emails roll in through the chacelebrate site so many are getting me a little… verklempt. My Twitter banner is a picture he made for me of the animated Friar Tuck at the Diet of Worms, and while I can’t take credit for one of the worst NBA trades of all time, we took that bum Paul George off his hands for every draft pick ever and presumptive MVP Shai-Gilgous Alexander.  He has started a podcast from his work at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum called “This Week in the West,” a CHA-inspired trip through Western and Cowboy history. X

Lastly, if you are an artist, I would love to see some EGBOK art—it may be posted somewhere near where you listen, a monument or a famous site. We will get back to regular non-horn tooting season soon, but these next few days will be fun…

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary still in Revelation 19:

9 Then the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!” And he added, “These are the true words of God.”

10 At this I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, “Don’t do that! I am a fellow servant with you and with your brothers and sisters who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God! For it is the Spirit of prophecy who bears testimony to Jesus.”

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 1st of April 2025 brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by Nobody’s Fool- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who finds the spaghetti tree funnier than that tired spaghetti monster; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.