“April showers bring May flowers.”
How many other months, besides March, have a little opening slogan?
“April Showers”; “April in Paris”; “April Love”: it seems to me that April and June are about the only months to have a whole suite of songs (plus a few for September).
April also has a sort of holiday, April Fool’s Day. Elementary teachers are met by a rush of kids telling them that their shoe is untied, there’s a spot on their jacket, the principal wants to see them… on and on and on, whatever seems hilarious to a little kid. There’s far worse ways for kids to spend their time. How many months have a day specifically devoted to hilarity and silliness? The Fellowship of Merry Christians established Holy Humor Sunday as the first Sunday after April Fool’s.
Easter and Passover often fall in April, about the time that spring is bursting out, so it’s time for new spring clothes. The daffodils and other bulbs are up, the sun shines more.
“Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes,” envisioned Walt Whitman, “with the Fourth-month eve at sundown.”
“’Twas the eighteenth of April, in ‘seventy-five” that Paul Revere galloped off to Lexington, where the American Revolution began the following morning.
The Civil War began in April, and ended in April four years later, with almost a million dead. Grieving for Abraham Lincoln, who was killed in April just on the point of victory, Walt Whitman wrote movingly of “when lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed.”
Eighty years less three days later, Franklin D. Roosevelt died, right on the point of victory in HIS war. Old men and women who had watched Lincoln’s funeral procession mourned again, for Roosevelt, as HIS procession passed.
The Spanish-American War began in April, in 1898. Seems the Bible had it right by describing spring as the time “when kings go forth to war.”
Apart from Easter and Passover (and those not every year), April’s a little short on holidays, though admittedly Easter and Passover are BIG holidays. But April 15 IS the date by which we need to get our tax returns in!
Have you heard that little gag (also beloved by elementary kids) that if April showers bring May flowers, then May flowers bring – Pilgrims! Actually, in April of 1621 the Pilgrims saw the Mayflower off, as it left them to return to England. With 30 kids and 20 adults left alive out of the original hundred, it must have been a scary moment. But they all stuck it out. “O strong hearts and true,” Longfellow wrote, “not one went back on the Mayflower.”
The April 4th Movement in China (1976) began the downfall of the “Gang of Four.” Steuben County reported its first COVID death on April 2, 2020.
The Mount Tambora volcano began a series of explosions on April 10, 1815, ushering in “the year without a summer.” The Titanic sailed and sank in April (1912).
George Washington became president in April, the Louisiana Purchase was made in April, and New York took Niagara Falls for our first state park, also in April.
Queen Elizabeth was born on April 21, but the country celebrates on June 10, when it’s less likely to rain. But even as far back as the 1300s Chaucer, “the poet of the dawn,” wrote about April (Aprille) with its sweet showers (his shoures soote). The “tendre croppes” start rising in the fields, while in the trees “smale fowles maken melodye.” No wonder, after a hard winter, that folk then long to go on pilgrimages, and pilgrims hie them forth to seek strange strands.
Travel’s easier for us than it was in Chaucer’s day. But for us too, the grass greens up, and the birds come back. The frosts are suddenly few, and the snowfalls fewer yet. Summer’s still far off, and winter still snaps at our heels, but spring is clearly here, and some days we go out with light jackets. Helped along by Daylight Savings Time, each day the sun sets just a little later. If any ice lingered on the ponds to the end of March, April shoos it away. At last.