{"id":1815,"date":"2020-04-01T14:15:29","date_gmt":"2020-04-01T14:15:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=1815"},"modified":"2020-04-01T14:15:29","modified_gmt":"2020-04-01T14:15:29","slug":"april-fools-day-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=1815","title":{"rendered":"April Fool’s Day \u2014 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This time last year, I thought things were screwy and It sort of seemed silly to celebrate April Fool\u2019s Day \u2014 I thought every<\/em> day seemed like April Fool\u2019s Day. But I was wrong \u2014 in hindsight, last year about this time, everything seemed pretty normal. Of course, this year is a different story, but it is April Fool\u2019s Day and tradition says that I should at least discuss it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I apologize if I\u2019m repeating myself, bur writing about the same day or event year after year makes it difficult t come up with new material. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

April Fool\u2019s Day is a time for playing pranks on unsuspecting people \u2014 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?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are no (detailed) references to April Fool\u2019s Day before sometime in the eighteenth century \u2014 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References to April Fool\u2019s 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\u2019s Day involves the French calendar reform of the sixteenth century. I discussed this theory a bit last year \u2014 if you didn\u2019t read it, and are interested, you can check last year\u2019s April 1 entry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The French have another theory that traces the origin of April Fool\u2019s Day back to the abundance of fish to be found in French streams and rivers during early April \u2014 when the young fish had just hatched. These young fish were easy to fool with a hook and lure. Therefore, the French called them \u201cPoisson d\u2019Avril\u201d or \u201cApril Fish.\u201d 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 \u201cPoisson d\/Avri\u201d to describe April Fool\u2019s Day pranks. Another \u2018French thing\u2019 is the custom of giving each other chocolate fish on April 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years, there have been millions of April Fool jokes played on people. Some fall into the \u201cclassic\u201d category, like this one\u2026.
On April 1, 1957, the BBC TV show \u201cPanorama\u201d ran a segment about the Swiss spaghetti harvest enjoying a \u201cbumper year\u201d 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 \u2014 then a relatively new invention \u2014and Auntie Beeb would never lie, would it? The story was ranked the No. 1 April Fool\u2019s hoax of all time by the Museum of Hoaxes website.
Happy April Fool\u2019s Day.
\u2014 30 \u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This time last year, I thought things were screwy and It sort of seemed silly to celebrate April Fool\u2019s Day \u2014 I thought every day seemed like April Fool\u2019s Day. But I was wrong \u2014 in hindsight, last year about … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1815"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1815"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1816,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1815\/revisions\/1816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}