Tricks and practical jokes are to be expected today, for it is All Fools’ Day, or April Fools. If you are to follow the tradition, you’ve got to complete your trick by noon… though it’s probably wise to be wary all day long. For gullible people like me, it can be a very long day indeed.
The origins of this one are tough to pin down. There is a Norse god named Loki whose feast day is today, and Loki happens to be a trickster god. So that could be it. But there also is the fact that March 25 was once New Year’s Day, making the First of April the Octave of New Year and the end of the new year revels, and it is thought that perhaps the foolishness of the date goes back to very old new year customs.
Whatever the origin, the practice of April Fools goes back many centuries throughout Europe. In Scotland, it’s known as hunting the gowk, the gowk being a cuckoo and in this case the fool. In France, it’s un poisson d’Avril, an April fish, who describes the fool, and there the tradition is more about sticking a piece of paper (often a drawing or a paper cutout of a fish or the word poisson) to the pack of the unsuspecting fool. And in Italy, the day features the same sort of fishy business, with the fool being a pesce d’Aprile. Italian government ministries have also gotten into the April Fools’ business at times, releasing improbable news stories that only the most gullible will fall for. National Public Radio and the BBC have both been known to insert a fictional news story into their April 1st broadcasts, as well, and even we had a little April Fools fun one year with our Book of Days calendar page for April, which featured Easter Eggplant as it is grown here in Lake Worth, along with a calendar featuring some lesser-known April holidays like St. Biscotti’s Day, honoring the man who brought hard biscuits to the Holy Family at the Nativity, Turnip Tuesday, and Dalmatia, an ancient Roman festival for which it is customary to howl at the moon while dressed in black-spotted white garments. That was the Convivio Book of Days calendar page for April 2005, but I’ve since been very well behaved on All Fools’ Day, preferring to keep the mischief more local (like glueing the toothpaste cap to the tube, or glueing the toilet paper so it can’t be unrolled, or placing a tiny scrap of Post-It note to the bottom of an unsuspecting person’s optical mouse).
This year, I am opting to lay off the tricks, but that doesn’t mean everyone else will. So be careful out there. Have fun. And be nice to people like me. Some of us have kind and gentle hearts and we are likely to believe anything.
Image: A still from the famous BBC Spaghetti Harvest news segment of April 1, 1957, detailing the amazing bumper crop that year of spaghetti grown and harvested in southern Switzerland… all due to mild winter conditions and the virtual disappearance of the destructive spaghetti weevil.