Feast of the Ass

What the day is

The Feast of the Ass was a medieval Christian observance held on January 14, chiefly in France. It commemorated the flight into Egypt, and the donkey that carried the holy family was represented by an actual animal led into the church.

Origin and background

It belonged to a cluster of midwinter observances in which the ordinary order of things was inverted for a day, the best known being the Feast of Fools, when junior clergy took over the roles of their superiors. These sat in the stretch after Christmas and drew on much older midwinter traditions of licensed misrule.

The donkey was brought up the aisle and given a place of honor, sometimes with a girl and child riding it. The most striking surviving detail is the responses: at points in the service the congregation is recorded as answering not with the usual words but by braying. A Latin hymn in praise of the animal, with a refrain imitating its call, survives from Beauvais.

Modern readers tend to assume this must have been irreverent. That is not quite right. The medieval church contained a great deal of this kind of thing, and the humor was generally understood to sit inside faith rather than against it, acknowledging the donkey's genuine place in the story. The animal is, after all, the one that did the carrying.

Church authorities grew steadily less comfortable with it. Reforming bishops moved against the Feast of Fools and its relatives through the fifteenth century, and the Council of Basel condemned such observances in 1431. They faded through the following century, surviving longest in provincial cathedrals.

How to take part

• Read about the Feast of Fools, which is stranger and better documented.
• Look up the Beauvais donkey hymn, which genuinely exists.
• Consider how much room an institution can leave for laughing at itself.
• Visit a donkey sanctuary, which is the most practical form this can take.
• Notice the donkey next time you look at a nativity scene. It is doing the work.