The year begins on March 20th at the start of Aries season, yet most of the spring festivals fall a month or so after this date, in mid April or around the turning between April and May. April has been taken to derive from the Latin aperire, “to open,” and it is the time of the most visible openings of new growth, under the protection of Venus. The Last of April is a particular locus of celebration, being variably a date that sits in the midst of Floralia and the date also used for Beltane, Walpurgisnacht, and May Day Eve.
The earliest festival on or around 30 April appears to be the Floralia, a springtime festival in honor of the goddess, where six days of games (the ludi floriae) began around 28 April. Flora, a goddess of vegetation, fertility, and growth, had an ancient cult, but only received a temple after a drought in 241 or 238 BC led to the consultation of the Sibylline Books which prescribed a consecration, and thenceforth games and sacrifices to her took place in times of drought or privation. The ludi floriae began at 6 days, yet may have been extended by the addition of several days to April in Caesar’s calendar reforms. These games were as pornographic and licentious as one might imagine given the dedication of the goddess to fertility. Ludi, or games, were frequently used by the Roman authorities to bolster morale, especially after the Punic Wars, and by the Later Republic the ludi floriae were only the latest of a series of reinventions of older festivals into placating games events.
I quote Scullard’s Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic at length:
“Ovid also mentions (5.355ff.) two other aspects of the Floralia: multi-coloured garments were worn instead of the white that was customary at the Cerialia; the women were thus displaying their spring fashions. Secondly, the festival was well lighted. This may refer to night-shows in the theatres, while an anecdote told how the emperor Tiberius' baldness was mocked by a praetor, L. Caesianus, who sent 5,000 boys with shaven heads to light up the way for the spectators returning from the theatre at the Floralia. Tiberius took it in good part, but henceforth all bald persons were called Caesiani.” (p. 111)
30 April is also six months opposite to 30-31 October, and by inference also a day where the “veil between worlds” is thinner, begging various questions. Walpurgisnacht is celebrated most acutely in the Harz Mountains at the highest elevations of northern Germany, particularly around Brocken, the peak of highest elevation. 30 April is the saint’s day of Walpurga, a Devon-born abbess educated in writing and medicine who was venerated for warding off illness, pests, and witchcraft. Her festival was occasion for gentle redirection of pagan impulses away from the turning of spring to summer, yet the pagan influence irrepressibly persists. Goethe’s Mephisopheles drags Faust to the chaotic and absurd bacchanalia of Walpurgisnacht to finish the job, so to speak. From Bayard Taylor’s translation:
FAUST:
How strangely glimmers through the hollows
A dreary light, like that of dawn!
Its exhalation tracks and follows
The deepest gorges, faint and wan.
Here steam, there rolling vapor sweepeth;
Here burns the glow through film and haze:
Now like a tender thread it creepeth,
Now like a fountain leaps and plays.
Here winds away, and in a hundred
Divided veins the valley braids:
There, in a corner pressed and sundered,
Itself detaches, spreads and fades.
Here gush the sparkles incandescent
Like scattered showers of golden sand;—
But, see! in all their height, at present,
The rocky ramparts blazing stand.
(Goethe, "Faust," trans. Bayard Taylor)
Brocken is shrouded in mist for 300 days out of the year. An optical illusion called the “Brocken specter” is caused by the observer standing between a light source and a cloud, and if there is sufficient water in the air, can be accompanied by halo-like rings of rainbow light.
Today, Walpurgisnacht is allegedly a German form of a “springtime Halloween.” While it’s true that nothing can change one’s outlook on the world, or one’s fortunes, faster than the right outfit, requiring an occasion to dress up seems to miss the point.