Many people know that they don’t trust anyone on April 1st. Where did this saying come from? After all, any proverb has some basis, and to find out which one, you need to immerse yourself in the past. It is there that the roots of many statements and sayings are hidden.
Slavic history has deep pagan roots, echoes of which can still be observed today. For example, in the same proverbs, sayings, beliefs and signs. On April 1, the ancient Slavs celebrated one interesting holiday. Rather, not even a holiday, but a certain milestone.
This day was considered Brownie Awakening Day. People believed that during the winter, like many animals and spirits, he hibernated and woke up only occasionally to do the necessary housework. The brownie slept exactly until the time when spring fully came into its own.
The arrival of spring was marked the day of the spring equinox, and all subsequent days until April 1 were the days of the meeting of spring. On the very first, spring came completely and irrevocably, and the main guardian spirit of the hearth — brownie — had to wake up to restore order in the house.
As you know, when we sleep for a long time and then wake up at the call of our alarm clock, spouse or mother, we are often dissatisfied with this. We yawn and grumble why we were woken up so early. Small children generally begin to be capricious. And the brownie sometimes has the child’s habits, and after a long hibernation he wakes up also not very joyful. Therefore, he immediately begins to play pranks, and sometimes even misbehave. Either he will pour out the remaining flour from the bags, or he will confuse the horses’ manes, scare the cows, and stain the laundry...
So people tried to cajole the dissatisfied brownie with porridge, milk and bread, but, as you know, bread must also come with spectacles. Such spectacles for the awakened spirit were the widespread festivities, jokes, and laughter of people in the house who played pranks on each other all day. In addition, to make it more fun for the brownie, and for everyone around them, the inhabitants of the house put on clothes inside out, like the very spirit of the ancestor, who, as you know, wears his fur vest with his seams outward. There were certainly different socks or shoes on their feet, and in conversation everyone tried to deceive each other or joke so that the owner-father of the brownie would forget that he had recently woken up.
Over time, they forgot about the meeting of spring and the cajoling of the brownie on April 1, but the tradition of joking, acting out and deceiving remained on this day.