Divisions and Precisions

Happy Fool's Day!

From email dated January 6, 1999:

Revel! Romp!! Revile!!! Don your best foppery! Wear your motley with pride!! Raise your Bauble high!!! Giggle your ass off!! Make angels in the snow nekkid and give them devil's horns! contemplate the freedom of flight! Tell a good lie! Utter beautiful blasphemies and kiss somebody... kiss them hard. Scare the neighbours. Be good to yourselves, be good to others. Play word disassociation backwards and be thoroughly tickled. And wherever you are, whatever you do, raise a glass to me, be it homemade sack or tequila or echinacea'd grapefruit juice... Cause I'll be raising a glass to you, this cold January day, to the whole motley crew... Hail Loki, Hail Raven, Hail Feste and Foppery... awaken your inner Fool and rejoice.

And so I say to you all: Happy Fool's Day! The sixth of January is traditionally Twelve Night, the final day of Christmas. Back in the Middle Ages, it was a time for the peasants to go wild. (Check out the beginning of The Hunchback of Notre Dame for an example.) A King of Fools was elected, and everyone and everything that deserved ridicule throughout the year got it for that one day.

Fool's Day is Mo's holiday now. She says she revived it when she was an undergrad, and had had a horrible Christmas. I'll spare you all the details, but it was bad. Fool's Day is the holiday after the holidays. You do anything that catches your fancy. Ideally, you should be with the people you most want to be with. If you're given a gift, you must take it, and feel no guilt if you have no gift in return, especially if it's because you couldn't afford one. Above all else, you must do something completely foolish.

I haven't decided on mine yet... dancing skyclad in my backyard occurred to me. As it's 20 degrees and windy, and I have neighbors, that certainly would be foolish. :) Whatever you do, do it in a spirit of fun and revelry. Posted by Lisa at January 6, 2000 07:59 PM