Tuesday
Apr012008
April Fool's Day
Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 10:47AM
So today is of course April Fool's Day, I made the mistake of not doing my research early and do not as of now trust any resource. I really wanted to do a real write up as I have a feeling this is seldom done but the more I thought about this day the more it occurs to me that any real history is going to be hard to find by the nature of the holiday.
Some of the theories that I ran across are:
1) In the mid 1500's France was switching to the new calendar system and recognizing the new year on January 1st instead of the first day of spring. Of course that does not fall on April 1 so does not really explain it.
2) There was a Roman Emperor who's court jester requested that he have a day to rule. The Emperor, being very fond of this jester, agreed and has been passed down.
3) Pagan practitioners wanting to fool the evil spirits.
But as I said I just do not trust any of the sources as I looked at them on March 31st.
One thing I believe to be correct is that April Fool's is not only celebrated in Europe or countries descended from Europe. I found this awhile ago that China also has a tradition of pulling pranks on the 1st of April. Though it is more the telling of "white lies".
I do have a quick story of when I convinced a co-worker that spaghetti comes from trees. There was a full history of how Marco Polo brought it back from China and the climate in Italy was just perfect for the transplanted tree. To add to the authenticity I explained that the green spaghetti was due to it being fresh and even that orange being from the fall. To my dismay I found out 10 years later that the BBC had beat me to the punch by many years.
Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_fool%27s
General:
Any thing I put here would be pointless.
One link I will add is from a friend of mine who sent me this
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080328-april-fools.html
Some of the theories that I ran across are:
1) In the mid 1500's France was switching to the new calendar system and recognizing the new year on January 1st instead of the first day of spring. Of course that does not fall on April 1 so does not really explain it.
2) There was a Roman Emperor who's court jester requested that he have a day to rule. The Emperor, being very fond of this jester, agreed and has been passed down.
3) Pagan practitioners wanting to fool the evil spirits.
But as I said I just do not trust any of the sources as I looked at them on March 31st.
One thing I believe to be correct is that April Fool's is not only celebrated in Europe or countries descended from Europe. I found this awhile ago that China also has a tradition of pulling pranks on the 1st of April. Though it is more the telling of "white lies".
I do have a quick story of when I convinced a co-worker that spaghetti comes from trees. There was a full history of how Marco Polo brought it back from China and the climate in Italy was just perfect for the transplanted tree. To add to the authenticity I explained that the green spaghetti was due to it being fresh and even that orange being from the fall. To my dismay I found out 10 years later that the BBC had beat me to the punch by many years.
Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_fool%27s
General:
Any thing I put here would be pointless.
One link I will add is from a friend of mine who sent me this
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080328-april-fools.html
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