This time last year, I thought things were screwy and It sort of seemed silly to celebrate April Fool’s Day — I thought every day seemed like April Fool’s Day. But I was wrong — in hindsight, last year about this time, everything seemed pretty normal. Of course, this year is a different story, but it is April Fool’s Day and tradition says that I should at least discuss it.
I apologize if I’m repeating myself, bur writing about the same day or event year after year makes it difficult t come up with new material.
April Fool’s Day is a time for playing pranks on unsuspecting people — the victim of such a prank is called an April Fool. So how did this practice (of playing pranks come about and why was the first day of April chosen for this purpose?
There are no (detailed) references to April Fool’s Day before sometime in the eighteenth century — sometime around then, specific references, and curiosity, about the day and its traditions began to appear. By the time these accounts started to be published, the custom was already well established throughout northern Europe. No one seems to know how the tradition had been adopted by so many different European cultures without more details and comments in newspapers, magazines and books.
References to April Fool’s Day can be found as early as the 1500s, but these early references were infrequent and tended to be rather vague. Many theories have surfaced about how the tradition began, but none of them are very compelling or convincing. The most popular theory about the origin of April Fool’s Day involves the French calendar reform of the sixteenth century. I discussed this theory a bit last year — if you didn’t read it, and are interested, you can check last year’s April 1 entry.
The French have another theory that traces the origin of April Fool’s Day back to the abundance of fish to be found in French streams and rivers during early April — when the young fish had just hatched. These young fish were easy to fool with a hook and lure. Therefore, the French called them “Poisson d’Avril” or “April Fish.” Soon it became customary, at least according to this theory, to fool people people on April 1, as a way of celebrating the abundance of foolish fish. The French still use the term “Poisson d/Avri” to describe April Fool’s Day pranks. Another ‘French thing’ is the custom of giving each other chocolate fish on April 1.
Over the years, there have been millions of April Fool jokes played on people. Some fall into the “classic” category, like this one….
On April 1, 1957, the BBC TV show “Panorama” ran a segment about the Swiss spaghetti harvest enjoying a “bumper year” thanks to mild weather and the elimination of the spaghetti weevil. Many credulous Britons were taken in, and why not? the story was on television — then a relatively new invention —and Auntie Beeb would never lie, would it? The story was ranked the No. 1 April Fool’s hoax of all time by the Museum of Hoaxes website.
Happy April Fool’s Day.
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