'Say a Fool Told It You'

“The time will come when we shall dance round the Maypole every morning before breakfast--a meal at which hot-cross buns will be a standing dish--and shall make April fools of one another every day before noon. The profound significance of All Fool’s Day--the glorious lesson that we are all fools--is too apt at present to be lost.” 

As kids we observed April Fools’ Day as a national holiday designed with the enjoyment of pre-pubescent children, especially boys, in mind. Children, after all, are anarchists. The sophisticated among us telephoned tobacco shops and asked if they had Prince Albert in a can. The less sophisticated would approach a teacher and shriek, “Your pants are on fire!” The even less sophisticated would repeat the same line to the same teacher six or seven times. It was a simpler age.

 

The passage quoted above is from Max Beerbohm’s parody of G.K. Chesterton, “Some Damnable Errors About Christmas,” in A Christmas Garland (1912). As usual, Beerbohm reveals the human truth at the heart of human ridiculousness. It’s time we all acknowledged our inner fool. There’s really no living with us otherwise. A Beerbohm forebear, Charles Lamb, puts it this way in “All Fools’ Day”:  

 

“And take my word for this, reader, and say a fool told it you, if you please, that he who hath not a dram of folly in his mixture, hath pounds of much worse matter in his composition.”