Marie-Claude says...
> "Poisson d'avril", would one say, when seeing so many dubious martyrs on
> this day.
Aha! A very interesting reaction, Marie-Claude, that was shared by a
couple of others in messages to me. A very reasonable reaction, of course,
but this was not a poisson d'avril, or April Fool's Day joke. I provided
the complete list of saints for the first day of April as it appears in
the *Acta Sanctorum*, April, t. 1 (sorry, I don't have the page number
with me). This is a good illustration of the enormous quantity of cults
that exist in Christianity. Of course, there are many other feasts for the
day as well, that one could extract from the list of praeterissimi that
follows the list that I mined in my post. But, since the *AA.SS.* list is
already so lengthy, normally I prefer to use a shorter list of more
well-known saints' feasts.
> Is it the same custom in other countries?
It's definitely the custom in North America, and in the United Kingdom
too. Everyone here pays special attention to the media on this day, as
newpapers and radio stations present outrageous 'news' stories as if they
were facts.
I, however, would never play an April Fool's joke on anyone.
;-)
George Ferzoco
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