It turns out that this celebration of sociopathic behavior was invented by the French, the nation which put the trash in Euro-trash and gave bad manners a bad name. And this is no joke.
It began in 1564 when King Charles IX decided to follow Pope Gregory's suggestion and begin the New Year with January and not April. Why the French originally celebrated New Year's Day on April first, I have no idea.
Now, in the sixteenth century France only had one road. It came out of Paris, turned left, looped all the way around the city and came back in from the same side. This tragic design (the original traffic circle), made communication with the majority of the nation difficult (producing the phrase "out-of-the-loop") and, when combined with the French phone system - which was in no better shape in the sixteenth century then than it is in today - meant that a lot of peasants never got the King's memo concerning the calendar adjustment.
So as they had every year thousands of these ill-informed peasants journeyed to Paris during the last week of March and on what they thought was New Year's eve gathered in Bastille Square to watch the cannon ball drop and to say bonjour to 1565. "Cing, quartre, trois, deux, un" and....no cannon ball. No champaign corks popping. No Le Dick Clark.
Anyone who has experienced the Parisian version of "good manners" can imagine what came next; the locals mocked the bewildered peasants and made them feel like complete fools. But the way that they did it makes the word "odd" seem inadequate. For reasons beyond understanding the Parisians snuck up behind their confused country cousins, surreptitiously stuck paper fish to the bumpkin's backs and then shouted in a loud voice, "Poisson d'Avril!", which translates as, "April Fish!", and then collapsed in raucous laughter and shouts of "tres bien".
Why would they shout "April Fish"? Perhaps because the first Parisian to label his victim an April "Fool" immediately received a mouth full of fist, while calling the victim an April "Fish" confused him just long enough so that the prankster could escape.
I have long thought that this uncharacteristic outbreak of French "humor" was actually inspired by Charles's Italian queen, Catherine de Medici, who was already famous throughout Europe for her gastronomical gags, such as her duck a la cyanide with a hemlock sauce; only a Medici could see the humor in humiliating the people who grew their food.
But however it started the Parisians knew a good time when they saw it and they sent peasants on "fool's errands", and tricked peasants with "fool's tales" every April first until France reverberated with gales of laughter and shouts of "Poisson d'Avril!" Good times.
Eventually the Parisians bullies grew bored with taunting the unresponsive peasants and in 1572 they shifted their attentions to the poor Huguenots. But by then the tradition of humiliating people for your own amusement on the first day of April had been born. And like Disco and a Dan Burton congressional investigation once invented it proved impossible to stop.
The holiday for the humor impaired spread around the globe with the new calendar like a fungus, infecting and evolving a little in each afflicted nation. The Germans added the "kick me" sign and a second day, which they call "Taily Day" to enjoy the frivolity of bruised buttocks. In Portugal the innocent victim is hit with flour, sometimes while still in the bag - the flour, not the victim. In Scotland the target is humiliatingly referred to as an "April Gawk"(?!), in England as a "Noodle" and in Canada as an "American."
Today, no matter where you live or how high your IQ, sooner or later every April First some prankster is going to humiliate you for his own amusement. The only defense is to humiliate him first. I would have expected mental health professionals to call for a stop to this public insanity but evidently they are too busy pulling jokes on their patients.
So button that top button, zip up your pants, tie your shoes and look out for the cat. And repeat after me; Poisson d'Avril!
Funny, huh?
Kimit Muston is a writer living in North Hollywood. If you have any comments about his columns,
he may be contacted at inditer.com
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