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Curmudgeon Alert!
Apr. 1st, 2018 05:48 pmOh, what joy. Two of my least favorite days of the year happen to fall on the same day this year. Easter Sunday and April Fool's Day. I am an early adopter of curmudgeonhood, so let me hold forth at length why I loathe both events celebrated today. I will admit that having been born on July 4th, and sharing that birthday with a younger sister soured me on holidays in general at an early age.
But Easter! Still tied to an astronomical calendar that made no sense 2,000 years ago, Easter wanders around like a drunk at a party, bumping into other dates and finally crashing into the punch bowl. Ideally, Easter is a holy day of celebration, the day when Dionysus - sorry, Jesus - rose from the dead to assume his place on Mt. Olympus. Damn. Heaven, his place in heaven. Honestly, read enough religious history and your dying and religious tropes get confused.
But since there is a traffic jam of resurrecting deities around the vernal equinox, Christianity eager absorbed those traditions, mostly of fertility and agricultural gods and goddesses, as the coming of Spring represents the rebirth of life. So along with sunrise masses and shouts of Χριστός Ανέστη in Greek Orthodox churches, you get fertility symbols like eggs and bunnies. Yes, moms and dads, you just gave little Susie offering encouraging her to go have sex.
Now, about that name . . . it was nothing to do with Ishtar. However, the Venerable Bede, writing in the 8th century, links the celebration of the equinox to a goddess named Ēostre, one of the many goddesses of the dawn linked to the Proto-Indo-European goddess Haéusōs. In Greek and Latin, the name is local variations on Passover.
But of course, even though I have nothing to do with the religion, it attacked my daily existence. If I see that clucking bunny commercial for chocolate eggs one more freaking time I shall scream. Ever advert we get in the mail assumes that we need a big ham for our non-existent big family dinner. If I gave in to all the candy deals I would be a diabetic in three days. And the money spent on special outfits for children that will be worn once kills me.
Seriously, I wish American Christians could learn from Judaism and reclaim their holidays from the media and secular blitz. Know what I heard about Passover this year? When it started. And that's only because there was some anger about scheduling the Hugo Finalists announcements on the first full day of the holiday.
Enough about that. let's get to a day I look forward to with mounting rage every freaking year. April 1st. April Fool's Day.
Look, I love me some Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales introduced me to the joy that is Middle English. His stories are timeless. But if I had a time machine, one of my first stops (after seeing the Grateful Dead play the last show at Winterland) would be to get him to through the Nun's Priest Tale in the fire.
It's not even the best story in the very long series and eliminating it eliminates this bizarre fixation on stupid jokes. We even have the date wrong! Chaucer wrote that the Nun's tale is set "Syn March bigan thritty dayes and two" which many readers interpreted as March 32nd, better known as April 1st. Modern scholars believe that there is a copying error in the extant manuscripts and that Chaucer actually wrote, Syn March was gon. If so, the passage would have originally meant 32 days after March, i.e. May 2nd.
Copying errors and the oddities of Middle English aside, I hate this day because 90% of the so-called "jokes" are stupid, hurtful, or just fall flat. In my opinion, Think Geek is the only company to regularly win at April Fool's because if there is a strong enough response, they'll put the joke item into production. A joke can holder that looked like a beet stein was so popular they made it in sold thousands.
But so many of the jokes are just cruel. I've already seen several fake proposals, and a kid getting a fake acceptance latter to Harvard. What is the fucking point here? First of all, everyone knows it's coming, so the impact of most of the big hoaxes is diluted, and the jokes played on people tend to hurt them. Seriously, if someone pulled these jokes on me, I'd shove my cane down their throats. It's not funny anymore.
So yeah. I won't even get into the stupid store closures and the like. And don't even get me started on Arbor Day.
But Easter! Still tied to an astronomical calendar that made no sense 2,000 years ago, Easter wanders around like a drunk at a party, bumping into other dates and finally crashing into the punch bowl. Ideally, Easter is a holy day of celebration, the day when Dionysus - sorry, Jesus - rose from the dead to assume his place on Mt. Olympus. Damn. Heaven, his place in heaven. Honestly, read enough religious history and your dying and religious tropes get confused.
But since there is a traffic jam of resurrecting deities around the vernal equinox, Christianity eager absorbed those traditions, mostly of fertility and agricultural gods and goddesses, as the coming of Spring represents the rebirth of life. So along with sunrise masses and shouts of Χριστός Ανέστη in Greek Orthodox churches, you get fertility symbols like eggs and bunnies. Yes, moms and dads, you just gave little Susie offering encouraging her to go have sex.
Now, about that name . . . it was nothing to do with Ishtar. However, the Venerable Bede, writing in the 8th century, links the celebration of the equinox to a goddess named Ēostre, one of the many goddesses of the dawn linked to the Proto-Indo-European goddess Haéusōs. In Greek and Latin, the name is local variations on Passover.
But of course, even though I have nothing to do with the religion, it attacked my daily existence. If I see that clucking bunny commercial for chocolate eggs one more freaking time I shall scream. Ever advert we get in the mail assumes that we need a big ham for our non-existent big family dinner. If I gave in to all the candy deals I would be a diabetic in three days. And the money spent on special outfits for children that will be worn once kills me.
Seriously, I wish American Christians could learn from Judaism and reclaim their holidays from the media and secular blitz. Know what I heard about Passover this year? When it started. And that's only because there was some anger about scheduling the Hugo Finalists announcements on the first full day of the holiday.
Enough about that. let's get to a day I look forward to with mounting rage every freaking year. April 1st. April Fool's Day.
Look, I love me some Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales introduced me to the joy that is Middle English. His stories are timeless. But if I had a time machine, one of my first stops (after seeing the Grateful Dead play the last show at Winterland) would be to get him to through the Nun's Priest Tale in the fire.
It's not even the best story in the very long series and eliminating it eliminates this bizarre fixation on stupid jokes. We even have the date wrong! Chaucer wrote that the Nun's tale is set "Syn March bigan thritty dayes and two" which many readers interpreted as March 32nd, better known as April 1st. Modern scholars believe that there is a copying error in the extant manuscripts and that Chaucer actually wrote, Syn March was gon. If so, the passage would have originally meant 32 days after March, i.e. May 2nd.
Copying errors and the oddities of Middle English aside, I hate this day because 90% of the so-called "jokes" are stupid, hurtful, or just fall flat. In my opinion, Think Geek is the only company to regularly win at April Fool's because if there is a strong enough response, they'll put the joke item into production. A joke can holder that looked like a beet stein was so popular they made it in sold thousands.
But so many of the jokes are just cruel. I've already seen several fake proposals, and a kid getting a fake acceptance latter to Harvard. What is the fucking point here? First of all, everyone knows it's coming, so the impact of most of the big hoaxes is diluted, and the jokes played on people tend to hurt them. Seriously, if someone pulled these jokes on me, I'd shove my cane down their throats. It's not funny anymore.
So yeah. I won't even get into the stupid store closures and the like. And don't even get me started on Arbor Day.
