King of Fools

Take it or leave it; just throwing this out there. Feast of Fools is tied to the Roman Saturnalia which falls around Christmas time. However, I will argue that Feast of Fools was once associated with April Fools' Day, and I will also argue that this holiday once had a religious tie, specifically regarding Jesus as the King of Fools.

Saturnalia was the celebration of Saturn making his annual resurgence to the world as seen by the sun’s returning for longer durations after the winter solstice. This was a twelve day holiday in which the Feast of Fools was said to be involved. However, at one time, the Western New Year was said to be at the end of March or early April. This was the time slightly after the spring equinox where the light in one day was more than the duration of night in the given day.

So today people still celebrate Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday which falls somewhere between early February to early March. This is a celebration of making it through the winter where all the built-up stores could be consumed in anticipation of the coming spring and summer. One of the traditions during this holiday is the King’s Cake, or King of the Bean.

What happened here was that a cake was made and a coin, bean, or today a plastic baby Jesus was placed inside. Today, they who get the item in their cake slice will have certain privileges, including the purchase of the cake the following year. In Roman times, the “winner” was said to be the “King of Fools” or “Lord of Misrule”. Sometimes there was no cake but the person was simply elected.

This person had much more freedom in receiving this “honor”. This “king” was allowed to be as crude, promiscuous, and insidious as they wished. They had an entire month to basically do whatever they wanted. The newly anointed “Lord of Misrule” or “King of Fools” was paraded around the streets with a crown of palms and dressed in a purple or colorful robe, symbolizing their temporary stint of royalty. This holiday was also synonymous with the “Feast of Asses” where donkeys were led into churches and “sermons” were given followed by “hee-haw”, instead of the usual “amen”.

Now is there any coincidence that Palm Sunday occasionally lands on April 1st as it did in 2007?

But here’s the kicker. At the end of the month of misrule, the “king” is obligated to kill themselves as a sacrifice to the true ruler. So enter the Feast of Fools in which the person has their last chance to enjoy their hedonistic ways before meeting their maker. How this relates to Passover, I don’t know, but it seems like Jesus knew what was coming and accepted it.

What is also interesting is that Barabbas was generally not a person’s name in Syrian tradition, but this was likely a misspelling of “Karabbas” was the name for this mock-king. In the Gospels, Barabbas was the person who Jesus took the place of on the cross.

So as the god Attis, who is the god of vegetation and who is also said to have died and come back to life every spring, and is closely related to almond trees, might Jesus have just been a representation of this annual event rather than this being a one-time deal where Jesus, through death was able to rewrite the Old Testament? I’m going with Jesus being ritually sacrificed.