Lesson: April Fool's Day
Xavier Blair 23 Oct 2017 15:04
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- What is April Fool's Day and what are its origins?
- It is commonly believed that in medieval France, New Year was celebrated on 1 April.
- Then in 1562, Pope Gregory introduced a new calendar for the Christian world, changing New Year to 1 January.
- With no modern communications, news travelled slowly and new ideas were often questioned.
- Many people did not hear of the change, others chose to ignore it, while some merely forgot.
- These people were called fools.
- Invitations to non-existent New Year parties were sent and other practical jokes were played.
- This jesting evolved over time into a tradition of playing pranks on 1 April.
- The custom eventually spread to England and Scotland,
- and it was later transported across the Atlantic to the American colonies of the English and the French.
- April Fools Day has now developed into an international festival of fun,
- with different nationalities celebrating the day in special ways.
- In France and Italy, if someone plays a trick on you, you are the fish of April.
- By the month of April fish have only just hatched and are therefore easy to catch.
- Children stick paper fish to their friends' backs and chocolate fish are found in the shops.
- In Scotland, April Fools Day lasts for two days!
- The second day is called Taily Day
- and tricks on this day involve the bottom or the tail in informal speech.
- Often a sign saying kick me is stuck onto someone's back without them knowing.
- In Spain and Mexico, similar celebrations take place on 28 December.
- The day is the Feast of the Holy Innocents.
- Originally, the day was a sad remembrance of the slaughter of the innocent children by Herod
- in his search for the baby Jesus.
- It eventually changed to a lighter commemoration of innocence involving pranks and trickery.
- Today, Americans and the British play small tricks on friends and strangers alike on 1 April.
- A common trick is to point to a friend's shoe and say Your shoelace is untied.
- When they look down, they are laughed at.
- Schoolchildren might tell a friend that school has been cancelled.
- A bag of flour might be balanced on the top of a door so that when the victim opens the door,
- the flour empties over their head.
- Sometimes the media gets involved.
- Once, a British short film was shown on April Fools Day
- about spaghetti farmers and how they harvest their crop from spaghetti trees!
- Most April Fool jokes are in good fun and not meant to harm anyone.
- The best trick is the one where everyone laughs, especially the person upon whom the joke has been played.
- Two British policemen were sent to investigate a glowing flying saucer on 31 March,
- the day before April Fool's Day.
- When the policemen arrived at a field in Surrey,
- they saw a small figure wearing a silver space suit walking out of a spacecraft.
- Immediately the police ran off in the opposite direction.
- Reports revealed that the alien was in fact a midget,
- and the flying saucer was a hot air balloon that had been specially built to look like a UFO by Richard Branson,
- the 36-year-old chairman of Virgin Records.
- Branson had planned to land the balloon in London's Hyde Park on 1 April.
- However, a wind change had brought him down in a Surrey field.
- The police were bombarded with phone calls from terrified motorists as the balloon drifted over the motorway.
- One lady was so shocked by the incident
- that she didn't realise that she was standing naked in front of her window
- as she was describing the UFO to a radio station.
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