Fooling around as April Fools’ Day falls on Easter
As you open all those Easter eggs, don’t get distracted into believing your shoelaces are undone. Watch out for drawing pins on chairs, Oreos filled with toothpaste, and clingfilm across the toilet bowl.
The media will broadcast phoney stories, and people of all ages will do awful things to one another, and – provided they don’t go too far – get away with it.
Although celebrated from Brazil to India, Sweden to New Zealand, countries mark the ancient tradition in slightly different ways.
Worldwide wheezes
Author Bridget Haggerty describes how in Ireland people used to get someone to deliver a note that read “send the fool further”. These “fools’ errands” often included the verse: “don’t you laugh, and don’t you smile, send the gowk another mile!” Traditionally, pupils in Belgium lock their teachers out of school, until they promise to bring them sweets.
In Italy, where the day is called “Pesce d’aprile” (April Fish), a cut-out of a small fish (pesciolino) might be taped to the victim’s back. A similar antic is found in France where some people have been duped into phoning fish shops.
Whoever manages a successful trick in Greece will have good luck all year.
Whereas in India, people wear face paint and toss coloured dust while playing practical jokes – on March 31.
In England, it is such a serious breech of the rules to play a trick after midday that the prankster themself is deemed an April fool.
Uniquely, frolics in Scotland continue for two days. The first day is for hoaxes; on the second, people place tails or “kick me – hard!” signs on each other’s backs.
What a contrast to Saudi Arabia where there’s no fooling at all. A fatwa decrees April Fools’ Day is a form of organised deception and lying, practised by non-believers.
Blurred beginnings
It’s a bit of a mystery how all this monkey business began.
Some say it is, quite literally, as old as the Ark - when Noah sent the dove out on a useless errand. Or, that the tomfoolery derives from the Ancient Greek festival of Hilaria. Marking the beginning of the joys of spring, Hilaria was noted for masked balls, mad behaviour and practical jokes.
Fingers have also been pointed at the Roman Emperor Constantine. When court jesters told him they could do a better job of running the empire, he allowed one, called Kugel, to be emperor for the day. Kugel promptly passed a law calling for everyone to be very silly… once a year. Others believe it’s all Geoffrey Chaucer’s fault. In The Nun’s Priest’s Tale (1392), the poet wrote about a fox that tricked a proud rooster called Chauntecleer into exposing its neck on March “thritty dayes and two”.
But most trace the day back to the 16th century when France switched from the Gregorian to the Julian calendar, and the New Year changed to 1 January. Those who didn’t realise, or didn’t want to change, and continued with the traditional celebrations that culminated on 1 April, became the butt of jokes. Not convinced? Then perhaps Mother Nature inspired all the mischief by tricking us with her unpredictable weather. Whatever its origins, April Fools’ Day has certainly produced some marvellous hoaxes over the years:
Six of the best spoofs
1. “The Annual Ceremony of Washing the Lions”, Tower of London, 1698 In the earliest April Fool targeted at the general public, pranksters printed official-looking tickets promising admission to a lion-washing event in the moat. Entrance was via the White Gate.
Pandemonium broke out when hundreds showed up, only to realize they’d been tricked. Neither the lions, nor any such gate existed.
Londoners wised up. But unsuspecting out-of-towners were taken in by the stunt year after year.
2. The Swiss spaghetti harvest, 1957 At a time when spaghetti was not widely eaten outside Italy, distinguished broadcaster Richard Dimbleby hosted a BBC Panorama programme showing Swiss women plucking strands of spaghetti from trees and laying them out in the sun to dry. Viewers jammed the BBC switchboard. A number complained that the producers had got their facts wrong. Others wanted to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. “Place a piece of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce”, callers were told, “and hope for the best”.
3. Do-It-Yourself colour TV, Sweden, 1962 Technical guru, Kjell Stensson, informed viewers that they could convert their black and white TVs to colour by themselves. Just pull a nylon stocking over the screen, and the mesh would act as a prism, causing the light to bend, so it would appear as if the image was in colour. To achieve the best results, they should sit at a specified distance from the screen, and move their head to and fro “to align the colour spectrum”. Thousands of viewers later admitted that their families had fallen for the hoax.
4. Irish guards’ bearskin helmets, 1980 The British Army’s official magazine, Soldier, revealed that the fur on the bearskin helmets worn by Irish guards at Buckingham Palace keeps growing and needs to be trimmed regularly.
Bearskins, explained a certain Major Ursa, retain a hormone - called otiose - that lives on after the animal has died. “In the spring the skins really start to sprout.” An accompanying photo showed guardsmen sitting in an army barbershop, where one helmet is supposedly being trimmed. “The men were only too happy to go along with the joke,” commented their commanding officer, Lt Col. David Carter.
5. The Left-handed Whopper, 1998 Burger King published a full-page advert in USA Today, announcing the new “Left-handed Whopper”, specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans, 1.4 million of which visited Burger King joints every day.
“Finally, after years of neglect,” it proclaimed, “left-handed eaters will no longer need to conform to traditional right-handed eating methods.” Although containing the same ingredients as the original Whopper (hamburger, lettuce, tomato and relish), everything had been rotated 180 degrees, so left-handers could “HAVE IT THEIR WAY!”
A spokesperson from the Left-Handed Club is quoted as saying: “We are delighted that Burger King has recognized the difficulties of holding a hamburger in your left hand that has a natural right bias to it.” Burger King said thousands of customers showed up and were disappointed to find there was no such sandwich.
6. How to cook a unicorn, 2012 The British Library Medieval Manuscripts department published news of the “near-miraculous” discovery of a long-lost medieval cookbook from the time of Philippa of Hainault, Queen of England (1328-1369).
MS Additional 142012, f. 137r included an illustrated recipe for how to cook a unicorn: “Taketh one unicorne, and then marinade it in cloves and garlic before finally roasting it on a griddle.”
The recipe followed another for codswallop.
“We’ve been looking for this book for years,” rejoiced Professor Brian Trump of the British Medieval Cookbook Project. “The moment I set my eyes on it was spine-tingling.”
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