Thursday, March 22, 2012

Happy April Fool's Day

by Lois Jamieson

I hope you had a chance to play a joke on April Fool’s Day before someone got you first.As teen-agers, my brothers and I loved to play April Fool’s jokes on our mother. She always believed us - or at least she let us think she did. Then when we had grandchildren it was always fun to play jokes on them.

Wondering how this all began I did a little research. Here is what I found out – practically nothing! Actually why or when the 1st day of April was designated remains a mystery, although historians provide ‘feasible’ explanations. I can tell you that there are clues in French history.
At least here is someone to blame if you have a joke pulled on you – Pope Gregory X111 and the Julian calendar. On this calendar, the 1st day of the year began around March 25th. France adopted the new Gregorian calendar in 1582 which made the new year day January 1st.


Here’s the story of what happened then – the outlaying rural areas had no knowledge of the change and others refused to accept the new calendar. Sophisticated Frenchmen called these ignorant peasants “fools” and played jokes on them, which had something to do with fish. This then spread to the rest of Europe and voila, April Fool’ s Day was born……I think.

At any rate, I’m sorry it falls on a Sunday this year and not on one of my days volunteering at StarShine. I could have had so much fun with “kids” at the school. It looks like I’ll have to wait 3 more years for it to fall on the right day.

Meanwhile, have a happy April Fool’s Day.

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