April Fools’ Day comes around once a year, although sometimes it seems to come more often than that. Today, we are expected to play practical jokes, and to be the good-natured victims of jokes played by others.
The tradition of practical joking on April 1 is less robust than it used to be, perhaps because every potential victim is poised to call his or her lawyer and sue for pain, humiliation or catastrophic injury. It’s safer to play jokes on your family and friends, if you have any friends left after last year. April Fool jokes vary from place to place. In Portugal, for example, I’m told that they throw flour at each other on this date. In France they secretly attach a paper fish to your back and cry out “Poisson d’avril!” I know that sounds silly, but the French are fond of fish. Here in America you are more likely to be told that your shoelaces are untied, or have your clocks changed, or be inundated with mythical computer messages claiming that you have won the lottery or lost your credit rating. One favorite trick when I was young was to send a small boy to the hardware store to get a rubber hammer for banging in glass nails. Even the media got into the act. Many years ago, on April 1, BBC television broadcast a whole program about the Italian spaghetti harvest. It showed diligent peasants cutting long strings of spaghetti hanging from trees. Years later my mother told me that this had been a joke, and I never trusted spaghetti or the BBC ever again.
The true origin of April Fool’s Day – or All Fool’s Day as it is sometimes called to emphasize its democratic character – is something of a mystery. It is certainly many centuries old, but every historical source gives a different explanation. Some cite the Hilaria Festival in Ancient Rome and the Holi or Huli Festival of India, at the end of March. Other authorities say that the tradition began with the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1562, which changed the start of the year from April 1 to January 1. Those who got their dates mixed up were called “April Fools.” There’s even a suggestion that poor old Noah became the first April Fool when he sent the dove out from the ark prematurely, on April 1.
I considered many such unlikely explanations before I realized that I had been fooled myself. These aren’t real history, but an accumulation of silly stories told by generations of jokers. We don’t really need a historical explanation of April Fools’ Day. It’s just a bit of fun, and everybody everywhere enjoys a bit of fun.
But nobody enjoys being made to look or feel foolish all the time. On the first of April we can accept, and even be mildly amused by these little hoaxes. But to be bombarded every day of the year with transparent deceptions, cruel tricks, misleading statements, trumped up stories, fabrications, disinformation, unlikely fables, devious fairy tales, and all the other synonyms in the thesaurus for lies, that’s too much. It sounds unlikely, I know, but it is almost as if somebody is trying to make fools out of us.
Copyright: David Bouchier
