All Fools Day

by Marisa

April Fools' Day is upon us, and whether you're pouring salt in the sugar bowl or tasting some suspiciously salty cereal yourself, the day's developments are worth taking with, well, a grain of salt. So, how did this springtime foolery begin?

Stories of April Fools' Day's origin are as riddled with tricksters as the holiday itself, but the most credible explanations involve the transition from the Julian calendar (in which the New Year coincided roughly with the celebration of the vernal equinox from March 22nd to April 2nd) to the Gregorian calendar we use today. Those who opposed or had simply not yet heard of the New Year's change, became fodder for the faux New Year's pranks that ultimately begat today's April hoaxes.

By this explanation, April Fools' Day traditions first appeared in France, where Charles IX decreed January 1st as the New Year in 1564 - 18 years before the official transition to the Gregorian calendar. In France, the fooled fellow was known as an April fish or poisson d'Avril, in a nod to Pisces, the recently completed zodiac sign, and a popular French prank involved placing dead fish on the backs of friends. Sound suspiciously unsubtle? French children now attach paper, fish-shaped stickies to their friends' backs, while French bakeries offer fish-shaped sweets in April celebration.

In the United States, what we lack in April Fools' history, we make up for in large-scale modern pranks. In 1988 physicist Mark Boslough published an article claiming the Alabama Legislature had changed the value of Pi to 3.0. Ten years later, Burger King claimed, via an ad in USA Today, to have developed a "Left-Handed Whopper" whose condiments dripped out the right side. Amusingly, not only did customers order said burger, but some requested a traditional "right-handed burger" as well.

The definitive American pop culture prank, however, may be the full-page ad placed in the New York Times in 1996, claiming Taco Bell had purchased the Liberty Bell to reduce our nation's debt, renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell. Without missing a beat, then White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry responded that a similar arrangement had renamed the Lincoln Memorial as the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial.

Perhaps Mark Twain said it best, "The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year." We at Daily Mantra hope you enjoy!

| 03/31/08 | Lessons