April Fool’s Day: Glory and a Downside

By Denise Noe

         The precise origin of April Fool’s Day is unknown.  However, there are traditions in a variety of cultures that are believed to have provided models for it and out of which it may have grown.  Ancient festivals in which slaves or servants were allowed to boss around their masters and children pretended to switch places with parents are likely antecedents for April Fool’s Day.

The earliest recorded mentions of “All Fool’s Day” date from the Middle Ages.  The Middle Ages is often thought of, and not without reason, as a grim period in European history.  It was a culture of rigid, birth-based hierarchies, of torture as an officially sanctioned punishment for many offenses, of death as a punishment for trivial ones, of widespread superstition, and the terrible slaughter caused by the bubonic plague.

So perhaps it was inevitable that the Middle Ages gave birth to this most whimsical and light-hearted of holidays, April Fool’s Day.  Human nature demands relief from crushing oppressions and will resourcefully retrieve joy in the midst of tragedy. 

However, April Fool’s Day may have been birthed by a quite benign medieval change. Many authorities trace it to the introduction of the Gregorian calendar by Pope Gregory in 1562.  Prior to the adoption of that calendar, France had celebrated the start of a New Year on April 1^st. Those who had not heard of the change continued to celebrate New Year’s Day on April 1^st which led pranksters to play tricks on them or send them on a “fool’s errand.”

In our modern era, new technologies have combined with good, old-fashioned creativity to produce some hilarious April Fool’s day hoaxes.

One of the wackiest took place in 1957 when Great Britain’s BBC program Panorama announced that Swiss farmers were reaping a bumper spaghetti crop.  The TV show beamed film of supposed Swiss farm workers pulling spaghetti from trees. The station was deluged with phone calls from viewers who wanted to know how to grow spaghetti trees. The BBC’s answer was that they should “place a sprig of spaghetti in a tine of tomato sauce and hope for the best.”

Another great April Fool’s Day trick was committed by Sports Illustrated. In April, 1985, the magazine published a story about a rookie pitcher for the Mets named Sidd Finch who could throw a baseball at 168 mph but had never played the game.  Finch had supposedly studied pitching in a Tibetan monastery.  Gulled baseball fans wrote to the magazine wanting to know more about Finch, who was the product of the fertile imagination of George Plimpton.

Discover magazine played a trick on its readers in its April 1995 edition in which an article claimed that biologist Dr. Aprile Pazzo had discovered a species in Antarctica called the “hotheaded naked ice borer.”  These animals supposedly had bony plates on their head that could turn burning hot and allow the animals to bore through ice at extraordinary speeds. They hunted penguins by melting the ice beneath them.  I personally know someone who was taken in by this hoax and enthusiastically shared the wonder of the hotheaded naked ice borer with his friends.

As fun as this holiday is, it has an inevitable downside in the disappointment of the hoodwinked.  My mother, Betty Jo Dickerson, gave birth to all three of her children by Caesarian section.  Thus, her deliveries were scheduled.  She and her doctor agreed on a date of April 1^st for the delivery of my youngest sibling.  When she got home, she looked at a calendar and realized that April 1^st is April Fool’s Day.  “Oh no,” she said.  “This kid will have enough problems without being an April Fool’s baby.” She called up the doctor to reschedule and my youngest brother was born on April 2^nd.  I recently met someone who really was born on April 1^st.  She said she got tired of hearing people say, “I’ve got a present for you” followed by “April Fool!”

Wise thinking, Mom.