I don't want to be an April Fish!

I have never really liked April Fool's day. I've always been terribly naive, and find that silly pranks intended to be fun and harmless wallop me and invariably make me angry. I'm not a good recipient of a practical joke. I have also never quite been able to wrap my head around playing practical jokes on others. In the past I've joined in on some good ones that other people have come up with, and occassionaly have come up with a prank or two that has nothing to do with April Fools and usually is pulled quite seperately from this strange day. I've always tried to keep from doing anything overly annoying, and usually my pranks are more like, covering someones office in pictures and such. Nothing really damaging, and nothing that takes too long to clean up.

I decided to look up some history on this "holiday" to satiate my mind and what did I find? No one seems to know exactly how the prank-pulling all began. Many people speculate it was because of the Gregorian calendar being introduced in the 16th century, moving new years from a week long celebration ending on April 1 to a single day, January 1. In France they say many people still celebrated the April 1st day because news of such a change took approximately 7 years to travel around. Those who celebrated January 1 mocked the April 1sters and called them poisson d’avril, April Fish, because they were easily hooked, like the young fish of the season, into pranks for fake parties, fools errands, and the like. Eventually they just sneakily pinned paper fish to peoples backs. Kind of like a 16th century kick me sign. There are references to pranks pulled before then, so although the French seemed to make a good excuse for it, it had been going on a lot longer than that.

Of course April Fools was picked up world wide because everyone likes a good prank. Unless you're the one having the prank pulled on you. They say the Scots actually invented the kick me sign, and usually their jokes historically involved mooning and butts. Thus you've become the butt of a joke. The English came up with the idea that it's bad luck to prank after noon. I like the Roman version of the holiday the best, once known as the Festival of Hilaria, it was all about just laughing. So comedic plays would be performed and a few pranks would be pulled in the name of the resurrected god Attis. Although this was actually celebrated on March 25.

Mr. C told me this morning before he left for work his boss was trying to come up with good pranks yesterday to pull this morning and he had a suspicion he was going to wind up the butt of it. Now I'm wondering if he's been made into an April Fish.