Denise Noe: The Madwoman Speaks!

Published in the Bolivar Herald-Free Press 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. ...