Category Archives: All Fools’ Day

Apr 01 2026
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All Fools' Day, Book of Days Calendar, Easter Triduum, Holy Thursday, Maundy Thursday, Passover

April Showers, or Your Convivio Book of Days for April

For your printable Convivio Book of Days calendar for April, we are tuning into the old adage: April showers bring May flowers. Here in Lake Worth, the flowers are blooming already (Amaryllis on the ground, and when we look up, the sky right now is crazy yellow with the blooms of Tabebuia argentea). Spring is most definitely with us. We realize, though, this welcome season takes longer to reach other places. If you’ve seen little evidence of it yet, worry not, it will soon arrive.

If you’re reading this in the morning, beware, for it is All Fools’ Day, when tricks and practical jokes abound until noon. You may, of course, be one of the tricksters, in which case we wish you good luck and healthy fooling. I’ve initiated some good April Fools’ tricks in my day, but this year I am feeling rather dim-witted and so I am sticking to the defensive role, remaining on lookout all morning, with the goal being to avoid becoming un poisson d’Avril, as they say in France, or il pesce d’Aprile, as they say in Italy. Both would translate to An April Fish, the fish being the fool, and very often the unsuspecting fool might find a paper fish stuck to the back of his shirt. Why a fish? I don’t know. I’m going to leave it at that.

The setting sun this evening will bring the beginning of Passover, or Pesach, commemorating the freeing of the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt, and is celebrated with a meal, the seder. A friend explains it thusly: “We are traveling through the desert with our ancestors via a table filled with metaphor and symbolism.” Unleavened bread is a central part of the celebration, for the Israelites had to leave Egypt so quickly there was no time to let the bread rise. Instead, it had to be baked immediately.

The Italians call Passover Pasqua Ebraica, which you might translate as “Jewish Easter,” but in fact in many languages the names of both Easter and Passover are the same. Pesach informs the name given to Easter in Italian: Pasqua. The English word “Easter” does not share this etymological relation to Pesach. It is related more to the the Old English “Eostre,” which is the name of an Anglo-Saxon goddess whose feast day was celebrated around the Spring Equinox.

Among the questions asked at the seder table is this one: Why is this night different from all other nights? And just as I cannot tell you why when it comes to the poisson d’avril, I also cannot tell you why this night is different from all other nights. I’ve never attended a seder. But I will join all who are in spirit tonight and wish you abundant blessings.

In my Christian tradition, it is Spy Wednesday today, which has to do with Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus’ disciples, betraying him and setting the course for the rest of Holy Week. Tomorrow night, on Holy Thursday, we will make our pilgrimage to three churches, deep in the night, moon illuminating the skies above us, for the Night Watch. It is not necessary an easy night, and yet it is one of the most beautiful each year, one of the most special. And so our April will begin. A most eventful few days.

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OPEN SHOP DAY!
We’re planning to open the shop this Saturday from 11 to 4, for your last chance to pick up Easter goods like traditional wooden bunnies from Germany’s Erzgebirge woodworkers, beautiful pysanky eggs from Ukraine, German splintwood baskets and wood wool Easter grass (none of the plastic stuff!), German papier mache eggs to fill with treats, and as far as the sweets in your basket, how about sweet and sour Swedish candies, licorice (some chocolate covered) and fruitful gummies from Denmark, and marzipan piglets from Germany? CLICK HERE to shop, and come on by this Saturday, please!

And please make plans to join us later this month for our annual celebration of Independent Bookstore Day on Saturday, April 25. We’ll be making a full weekend of it, opening the shop on Friday night, the 24th, plus Saturday and Sunday the 25th and 26th. We’ll have some appropriate treats, no doubt, plus a free and simple letterpress and bookbinding project for all who come.

Image: “April Showers, Napa Valley” by Jules Tavernier. Oil on canvas, circa 1880-1884 [Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons].

Apr 01 2025
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All Fools' Day, Book of Days Calendar, Easter, Holy Week, Independent Bookstore Day, Lent

Springtide, and Your April Book of Days

April First now and here is your printable Convivio Book of Days calendar for the month. Cover star this time around: a rainy Easter Eve (in Paris, is my guess), painted in 1907 by John Sloan. We just reached Midlent this past Sunday, or Laetare Sunday, which means we are halfway through our Lenten journey, on the road to Easter, which this year comes on April 20. These are all movable days in the calendar, based on the timing of the full moon that follows the Vernal Equinox. I’ve never quite had the wherewithal to sit down and learn the calculations that determine the date each year of Easter. All I know is Lent began late this year and, following course, Easter comes late, too. I like when things are late, as I don’t feel so rushed.

Today, of course, is the First of April, which brings All Fools’ Day, and that is not a movable holiday. The origins of the day’s shenanigans are tough to pin down. Most signs point to the fact that March 25 was once New Year’s Day, making the First of April the Octave of New Year and the end of the new year revels, and it is thought that perhaps the foolishness of the date goes back to very old new year customs. The tricks and practical jokes traditionally end at noon, but not everyone understands this and so I think it’s a good day to remain generally wary and on guard.

April also brings Passover this year, and all the days of Holy Week that lead us to Easter, including one of my favorite nights of the year: Holy Thursday, or Maundy Thursday, when we visit three churches to sit in the close and holy darkness, together with other pilgrims doing the same. It is always such a lovely night: candle-lit, peaceful, a night when you can hear each old church’s creaks and groans. Our niece comes with us now on this pilgrimage, and I don’t even know if she realizes we do this each year because my grandma, Assunta, taught me to do it when I was a boy, the same age as my niece is now.

April also brings a springtime excuse to drink eggnog with San Jacinto’s Day on the 21st, and romantic divination a few nights later, on St. Mark’s Eve, and then comes Independent Bookstore Day on Saturday April 26. I’m generally not one for these newfangled holidays, but this one has new meaning for Convivio Bookworks now that we fancy ourselves a bit of an independent bookshop. We’ll be making a weekend-long celebration of it at the shop, where you may come print on our 1950s Nolan Tabletop Press and learn how to make your own book, too. Walpurgis Night wraps up the month, as the night of April 30 drifts into the morning of May the First, and May Day, an unoffocial first day of summer.

If you live in the South Florida area, please consider joining us at the shop for any of these upcoming events pictured below. The workshops require advance registration. Our Springtide Saturdays are perfect days to gather what you need for Easter. And Independent Bookstore Days are just going to be a whole lot of fun as we celebrate these things we love so much: books and reading. Click on any of the images to make them larger for easier reading, and find more details by visiting our Convivio Bookworks catalog pages. The shop is easy to find but off the beaten path at 1110 North G Street, Suite D, in Lake Worth Beach, Florida 33460.

 

Top image: “Easter Eve” by John Sloan. Oil on canvas, 1907 [Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.]

 

Apr 01 2021
All Fools' Day, Book of Days Calendar, Easter Triduum, Good Friday, Holy Thursday, Holy Week, Maundy Thursday

Easter Triduum, or Your April Book of Days

April has begun. It begins, of course, with All Fools’ Day, April Fools. There is an old Welsh saying: If every fool wore a crown, we should all be kings. The tricks and practical jokes traditionally end at noon, but not everyone understands this and so I think it’s a good day to remain generally wary and on guard. The origins of this day are tough to pin down. There is a Norse god named Loki whose feast day is today, and Loki happens to be a trickster god. So that could be it. But there also is the fact that March 25 was once New Year’s Day, making the First of April the Octave of New Year and the end of the new year revels, and it is thought that perhaps the foolishness of the date goes back to very old new year customs.

Being the First of the month, it’s also time for the April edition of the ongoing Convivio Book of Days calendar. We offer it to you as a printable PDF. The calendar makes a fine companion to this blog. Enjoy it with our compliments.

This year, what begins as All Fools’ Day ends as Holy Thursday, or Maundy Thursday, the night when we are invited to visit churches that will remain unlocked all night long, welcoming portals inviting us to be present with Jesus in his hours of tribulation as Good Friday approaches. Like last year, though, we will remain home, but typically it is a night when we visit three churches, as my grandmother Assunta taught us, though some people visit seven. I love this night, typically. It is such a bridge for me across time and space with the ones I love and the ones I miss, as I sit in the close and holy darkness of these quiet churches, meditating, praying, simply being. The moon is always present as I journey from church to church, a constant companion. This year, perhaps, a simple fire in the back yard may be the most appropriate way to mark the night. The moon will still be present, and where two or three are gathered… well, you know the story. But here ends the Lenten season, and here begins the Easter or Paschal Triduum: Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday: the Last Supper, the Passion, and the Resurrection through the Easter Vigil on Saturday night.

There is much more to read about these closing days of this week known as Holy Week, and you may do so in the previous chapter of this blog. (Just click “Previous Post” when you get to the bottom of this one, or click here.) Cover star for this month’s Convivio Book of Days calendar is a painting called “Easter Morning,” by Caspar David Friedrich, from 1833. The trees have yet to leaf out in this painting, but by the end of this month certainly the rivers will be a’running and the vernal push will be rising through sap from root to bud as trees erupt in new green leaves. And sometimes we need a reminder like this: of how so much wonder can happen over the course of a month.

Image: “Easter Morning” by Caspar David Friedrich, oil on canvas, 1833, [Public domain], via WikiPaintings.

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