Woody Magazine — The Fool Who Didn't Get the Memo
Most people know April Fool’s Day as the one day a year when lying is socially acceptable. But trace the holiday back to its roots and you find something more substantial — a cultural wound left by a single administrative decision made nearly five centuries ago.
The most widely accepted origin story leads to France in 1564. Across much of Europe at the time, the new year was celebrated during a festival period stretching from the spring equinox (around March 25) through April 1st. That changed when King Charles IX adopted the Gregorian calendar and declared January 1st the official start of the year. The trouble was that information spread slowly. Many people — especially those in remote areas — simply never heard the news. Others, like Irish Catholics, knew about the change but refused to accept it. Those who had gotten the memo began sending their out-of-touch neighbors fake party invitations and bogus New Year’s gifts. The term “April Fool” was born from that particular flavor of mockery.
In France, the person who gets fooled is still called a poisson d’avril — literally, an “April fish.” The phrase traces back to the idea that fish are especially easy to catch in April, when they swim close to the surface. What makes it even more layered is that the French word for mackerel, maquereau, also carries the meaning of “a person who leads others astray.” The language had already encoded the idea of being lured and caught long before anyone thought to turn it into a holiday.
The most celebrated prank in April Fool’s history came from an unlikely source: the BBC. On April 1, 1957, the flagship current affairs programme Panorama broadcast a straight-faced segment from a farm in Ticino, Switzerland, where a family was shown harvesting strands of spaghetti from trees. The narrator solemnly explained that a mild winter and the near-disappearance of the spaghetti weevil had led to a bumper crop that year. Because pasta was still considered an exotic foreign food by much of the British public, the phones lit up — viewers wanted to know where they could buy a spaghetti bush of their own. The segment has since been ranked the greatest April Fool’s hoax of all time by the American “Museum of Hoaxes.”
These days, the holiday feels different. In an era of AI-generated deepfakes and round-the-clock misinformation, the playful tradition of fake news is increasingly hard to pull off without collateral damage. Cardiff University journalism scholar Stuart Allan has pointed out that social media has fundamentally altered the relationship between news and its audience: in the newspaper era, the date at the top of the page told readers everything they needed to know. Now, a story can circulate for months or years after it was published, stripped of its original context. A prank only works when everyone is in on the joke — and that shared context is harder and harder to come by.
- 「Source ↗」 April Fools’ Day — Wikipedia
- 「Source ↗」 The Spaghetti Tree & the Ice Hunter — Hankook Ilbo
- 「Source ↗」 Why April Fool’s News Is Disappearing — Atlanta JoongAng Daily
- 「Source ↗」 1957 BBC Spaghetti Harvest — Macau Daily Times
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