Every once in a while, I will be approached in public about my Mel’s Musings. Most of the time the individual will have something positive to say. Sometimes the person will disagree with me and engage me in a pleasant and thoughtful, albeit confrontational, conversation about my opinions and/or conclusions. I’ve had both of those experiences recently over my piece on the town hall forum about the Lake Mitchell Project. On rare occasion some grammar maven will reproach me for my word choice or usage in an article I’ve written, which brings me to April Fools’ and not April Fool’s day. That’s because the day originally referred to a group of people misleading themselves as opposed to a single hapless individual fooled by another.
The calendar year used to end in the last week of March culminating in the start of a New Year on April 1st. Instead of celebrating on New Year’s Eve, ancient people would have themselves a week of celebration with the new year beginning on the first of April. The Julian calendar was introduced because by the 40’s BCE (Before the Common Era which has now replaced BC – Before Christ, although they both denote the exact same period, but society is woke, politically correct and not to be overtly Christian these days so….BCE) the Roman calendar was three months ahead of where it should be, in terms of lining up appropriately with the seasons, and getting farther ahead all of the time. So, the Julian calendar was adopted (borrowing from the Egyptian calendar) making the year 365 days with the start of the year on January 1st. The month of January was named for the Roman God Janus – the god of beginnings, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames and endings. In 1582, Pope Gregory instituted the Gregorian calendar which reaffirmed the January 1st date as the beginning of the year and subsequently started the tradition of periodic leap years in order to keep the calendar in sync.
I lost a lot of points in second grade because I couldn’t make the leap from 1966 to 1967. We had to put our first and last names on our papers, in legible printing, along with the date and the name of the assignment. When class resumed after Christmas break in the new year 1967, I still dated my papers 1966 well into March, losing a point on each assignment every time. I was in fourth grade before I could tell time off the face of an analog clock. Perhaps my negative experiences with time is one of the reasons why I’m so persnickety about punctuality now. The point being that when the New Year moved from April 1st to January 1st, some people refused to make the change. They were labeled as “April Fools”.
The Romans had a celebration of the New Year called “Hilaria” and it was hilarious. The celebration was joyful and involved masks, costumes, feasts and pranks. This tradition continued as a way to mock those who stubbornly continued to assert that April 1st was the start of the New Year. Paper fish were attached to the backs of these Aprilists (much like the signs that I would occasionally see on the backs of unsuspecting students in the halls of Mitchell High School when I was a teacher there). These paper fish were called “poisson d’Avril” (April Fish) denoting that the person wearing it was gullible and easily caught by a more cunning person. Eventually, “April Fish” morphed into “April Fools”. In the 1700’s in Scotland April Fools became a two day holiday with “Gowk Hunting” (our modern version would be “snipe” hunting) where people were sent on phony errands and the second day was Tailie Day with tails and kick me signs affixed to the derrieres of unsuspecting village folk.
Some of the more famous April Fools’ Day Pranks include:
1856: Some people in England received an official looking invitation from the Tower of London inviting them to the “annual washing of the lions”. The invitation was signed by a “senior warden” of the Tower of London. Now, up until 1835, the Tower of London did hold a variety of wild beasts (lions, bears, leopards, etc.) as a kind of personal zoo for the monarch and as a supply of exotic gifts for foreign potentates so the invitation sounded credible. However, the practice of holding wild animals in the Tower ended two decades prior to the “invitation”. It was an April Fools’ joke.
1956: Once again in Britain, the BBC aired a “documentary” on spaghetti farming. In the well-produced and oh so serious style of the BBC a “Swiss spaghetti farmer” was interviewed while harvesting the “ripe pasta” from “spaghetti trees” on camera. Gullible viewers asked how they could grow their own spaghetti trees and the BBC suggested, tongue in cheek, “…put a sprig of spaghetti in a can of tomato sauce and transplant when the tree begins to grow.” The BBC did suggest that the British climate wasn’t conducive for spaghetti trees, so viewers shouldn’t be too disappointed if their efforts didn’t produce results.
1962: In a segment on daytime television in Sweden, a “technical expert” had a hack for turning black and white television reception into color. All one had to do was to stretch a pair of panty hose over the television screen and magically black and white telecasts would be seen in radiant color. Panty hose sales skyrocketed but alas, no color reception. April Fools!
1976: Two decades had gone by since the BBC got in trouble for deceiving people with their spaghetti story. In the USA, it would be like PBS lying to you. The sprites at the BBC decided it was time for another square jawed, super serious, “legitimate” news story for April 1st and had astronomer Sir Patrick Moore (akin to today’s American astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson) deliver the news that at 9:47am on April 1, 1976 because of a confluence of Pluto and Jupiter the Earth’s gravity would be reduced allowing people to levitate. Apparently, several BBC employees collapsed in laughter at the view out of their office windows because lots of people were jumping in the air at that time in an attempt to levitate. They didn’t, perhaps they were too heavy for such a slight reduction in gravity? That was the BBC explanation to those riled up viewers who called to complain.
1998: Burger King took out a full page advertisement in USA Today on April 1, 1998 trumpeting their new product: The Left Handed Whopper. Yes, in a world made for right handed people – think school desks, scissors etc. – now there was a Whopper just for left handed people. South paws all over the country flooded their local Burger King for the Left-Handed Whopper. Teenagers behind the counter, oblivious of the ad in the USA Today, were baffled at the request from these lefties for this specialty sandwich.
2013: The US Army sent out a release that at the request of dog lovers and those interested in equality in general, it was now instituting a policy of drafting cats. Men had served in the United States Armed Forces since the Revolution and President Truman signed the Women’s Armed Service Integration Act in 1948 allowing women to receive regular permanent status in the armed forces. Dogs had long been in military service as canine bomb sniffers etc. so it was high time that the felines do their bit for their country as well. Sergeant First Class Tyler Radmall stated (it makes one wonder what he did and to whom which led him to be assigned to this April Fools’ prank), “Not only will the Army have a more cost effective working animal, but we will be doing our part to get them off the streets and finding them employment.” As you can imagine, the gullible and professionally outraged hit the ceiling in protest over cats being conscripted.
Happy April Fools’ Day and be careful today.