Old French custom makes fools of us all

Are you a fool?

How will you celebrate one of the meanest and wackiest of all holidays, April Fools’ Day?

While you are planning the holiday celebration by omission or commission, consider the origins of the day. While historians are very sketchy, apparently not caring that someone would write about it someday, some researchers date the practice back to ancient Rome and the March 25 Hilaria festival, or ancient India where the Holi festival celebrated the vernal equinox when nature supposedly “fools” us with sudden changes in the weather.

But most holiday “experts” assert that the custom started in France (naturally) around 1564. Before that time, New Year’s Day was celebrated on April 1. But the powers that be, namely Pope Gregory and Charles IX, decided that Jan. 1 was probably the most depressing day of the year (week after Christmas, the start of another dull winter) and needed a holiday of its own.

King Charlie decreed that the Gregorian calendar (no bathing suits) was the way to go and moved the New Year’s holiday to Jan. 1.

There was no CNN, no Fox network and no “hardball” to get the word out. Paul Harvey was still a liberal. The news of the holiday change went slowly from town to town, pub to pub and paddock to paddock. It took years for the word to get around. Some people heard the news and ignored it.

Those who kept celebrating in April found a lot more room in Times Square but were called “fools” by those in the know. Get it now?

These latter-day celebrants were often sent on “fools’ errands” such as getting a pot of steam from the brewery or renting the latest Jerry Lewis movie. The French called it “Poisson d’Avril” or “April fish,” apparently because newly hatched fish are easy to catch in April. Frenchmen invited their sappy friends to parties that did not exist, taped paper fish to friends’ backs, then fell over laughing when the paper fish were found. They screamed “poisson d’avril” at the subjects of the joke.

What fun. No wonder the custom caught on.

The French were having so much fun abusing their dimmer countrymen that the English and the Scots jumped on the bandwagon. The Scots loved it so much that they expanded the celebration to two days with the second day aimed at jokes involving the buttocks. Guess where the “kick me” signs originated. Scots called it Taily Day, for reasons only the Scots know.

They brought it to the Colonies, along with room-temperature beer, by the 18th century.

Mexicans didn’t want to be left out. They hold their version of the holiday on Dec. 28, which started as a memorial to the children slaughtered by King Herod. Great sense of humor, those Mexicans. Almost as funny as the French.

Spain also celebrates the holiday on Dec. 28 (maybe they STILL haven’t got the word) as the Feast of the Holy Innocents when the gullible are subject to the usual practical jokes.

Surprisingly, the flower, greeting card and toy industries have yet to cash in on this holiday, giving our credit cards a much-needed rest. Give them time.

To those who are the subject of a painful April Fools’ prank, take solace. Remember what Robert Louis Stevenson said. “It is better to be a fool than to be dead.”

Or Twain. “The First of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.”

The Red Sox will win the World Series this year.

April Fool!